"Liveliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... It was this liveliness and frivolity that had fascinated the hairdresser in days that had gone by; but if he had felt any self-distrust now in venturing within their influence, such apprehensions vanished with the first sight of the charms which had been counteracted ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... 'The "History of Bevis of Hampton" is abridged by my friend Mr. George Ellis, with that liveliness which extracts amusement even out of the most rude and unpromising of our old tales of chivalry. Ascapart, a most important personage in the romance, is thus ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... and 8 we find an example of the other kind of style, that of the short sentences containing that affected liveliness which so excited certain readers that they cannot mention Strauss any more without coupling his name with Lessing's. "I am well aware that what I propose to delineate in the following pages is known to multitudes as well as ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... gentleman on the sidewalk saw nothing, and turned the corner as calmly as a corner could be turned; but the old gentleman, not willing to lose him in that manner, jumped out of the 'bus and ran after, with a liveliness better becoming his eagerness than his age. In a moment more, the young lady, admonished by the driver's rap on the roof, would have paid her fare, but her portmonnaie was missing. I know not whether the bank-president was or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... rain, endless cold rain, and darkness heavy, wet, ponderous. Through the wind and rain it was a toil to move. Poor Miss Frost, who had seemed almost to blossom again in the long hot days, regaining a free cheerfulness that amounted almost to liveliness, and who even caused a sort of scandal by her intimacy with a rather handsome but common stranger, an insurance agent who had come into the place with a good, unused tenor voice—now she wilted again. She had given the rather florid young man tea in her room, and ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... which Mr. Hazlitt, perhaps too enthusiastically, describes as attainable in a background of Rembrandt's—"You stagger from one abyss of obscurity to another"—I cannot feel it an entirely glorious speciality to be distinguished, as Rembrandt was, from other great painters, chiefly by the liveliness of his darkness, and the dullness of his light. Glorious, or inglorious, the speciality itself is easily and accurately definable. It is the aim of the best painters to paint the noblest things they can see by sunlight. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... she noticed sometimes, when Betty was telling Kiah Parker's stories, that Godfrey's face took that strange resolute set that surprised her so much when he first came. It gave her new ideas about her little nephew, and showed her that, under all his liveliness and fancy, there was a strong will which it would be very hard to alter if once he made up his mind. It frightened her a little, for she did not feel half wise enough to lead him to make up his mind the right way. She did not talk to Betty about it; indeed at present ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... now. We the less value his opinion on these points as he himself shows an incomplete perception of the difference between would and should. (See Vol. V. pp. 114, 115, "We would now say, 'all liveliness,'" and "We would now write, 'the traits of,'" etc.) He says that the pronunciation commandement was already going out of use two centuries and a half ago. Mr. Pegge speaks of it as a common Cockneyism at the beginning of this century. Sometimes this ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... went on with constantly increasing liveliness and gayety to compare the social virtues with the tender sentiments. "The latter," said he, "can never fail us; we always carry them about with us, and every one becomes a master in them without practice: but we must go in quest of the former, we must take some trouble about them; and, though we ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... innocence of their hearts and the zeal born of the new opportunities to put their training into practice, selected the corner of the garden for an O.P. and just as things were growing interesting in the field of view of the telescope, the Hun instituted a "certain liveliness" of a different sort. Repetitions of this sort of thing convinced the observers that no useful purpose could be served by staying there, so they left—fortunately without mishap—and they were eager to ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... Every part of his physical organism was deranged and wearied out. His features combined the expression of intense fatigue with the sinister liveliness of an acute tragic apprehension. His failing faculties were kept horribly alert by the fear of what was going to happen to him next. So much that was appalling had already happened to him! He wanted repose; he wanted surcease; he wanted nothingness. He was too tired to move, but he ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... there are two babies, the princess and her Ka. For this imagined Ka, when a great queen, long after, she built this temple, or chapel, that offerings might be made there on certain appointed days. Fortunate Ka of Hatshepsu to have had so cheerful a dwelling! Liveliness pervades Deir-el-Bahari. I remember, when I was on my first visit to Egypt, lunching at Thebes with Monsieur Naville and Mr. Hogarth, and afterward going with them to watch the digging away of the masses of sand and rubbish which ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... trying to win Clarissa from her sad thoughts, and with the common masculine idea, that a little superficial liveliness of this kind can lighten the load of ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... with the traditional French view, because while the Americans believed enormously in their own powers, the French at that time (before Cantigny and the Second Marne) had the gravest doubts. The American confidence suffused the American stereotype, gave it that power to possess consciousness, that liveliness and sensible pungency, that stimulating effect upon the will, that emotional interest as an object of desire, that congruity with the activity in hand, which James notes as characteristic of what we regard as "real." [Footnote: Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 300.] The French ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... if she could play or sing, and when she said no, he asked her if she could skee. Those were the only personal remarks of the meal. Margaret, who was very much at home, entered into the talk with unwonted liveliness. It was a workshop of busy men and women who had finished the day's labor with enough vitality left to react. The food, Isabelle noticed, was plentiful and more than good. At the end of the meal the young men lighted cigarettes, and one of the nurses ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... don't think it's a nunnery," he said. By and by he let his gaze wander back to the town, in which he detected an appearance of liveliness and bustle not usual in New England villages, large or small. The main street was dotted with groups of men and women; and isolated figures, to which perhaps the distance lent a kind of uncanny aspect, were to be seen hurrying ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... friendly, and who invited me to her house. She was the wife of a Professor Maretti, and her name was Santa. The professor himself was a little half-famished looking man, full of learning, by the show of which he was in the habit of boring everybody who came near him. Santa made up for this by her liveliness and her warm interest in my affairs. Amid music and laughter I spent many happy hours in her house, made friends, and was encouraged to make my debut as an improvisatore. I had written to Eccellenza a true account ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Lemm; "no, that is not in my line; I have not now the liveliness, the play of the imagination, which is needed for an opera; I have lost too much of my power... But if I were still able to do something,—I should be content with a song; of course, I should ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... day of the engagement, a letter came from Cornelia, speaking of her desire to be at home again, and further intimating that she meant to return in a month at farthest. She did not write with as much liveliness and light-heartedness as usual. Sophie read the letter aloud to Bressant and her father as they sat in the former's room on ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... fight was a sort of avenue between great trees, whose broad leaves warded off the direct sun, and whose shade had as yet no black shadows. The turf was as elastic to the foot as a firm mattress. In the trees, birds were singing with liveliness; in the distance, horned cattle browsed, and a pair of horses stood gazing at the combatants, startled, no doubt, by this invasion of their pasturage. From the distance came the faint, mellow ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to prove to myself that I was not such a black sheep as some persons declared me to be, that I made up my mind to follow you and bring you back," said Percival, with his old liveliness of tone. "You see I had been more selfish than anybody knew. Shall I tell ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... increased his annoyance that there was a certain unusual liveliness about the usually languid figure of Fisher. The ordinary image of him in March's mind was that of a pallid and bald-browed gentleman, who seemed to be prematurely old as well as prematurely bald. He was remembered as a man who expressed the ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... over average height, of strong fleshy build, with a small blonde mustache on his upper lip. Under his eyes little pouches had already begun to form; his mouth was full and sensual; but he still retained an air of liveliness, of carelessness and agility, that might at first sight seem the spontaneity of youth. He wore a brown suit, a gray flannel shirt and Stetson hat—the common apparel ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... together in after life, and Jane gave a large share of her affections to him and his children. Mr. Knight was not only a very amiable man, kind and indulgent to all connected with him, but possessed also a spirit of fun and liveliness, which made him especially ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... them was a man of great liveliness and activity, of whom his companion said that he would tire any horse in Inverness. Both of them were civil and ready-handed Civility seems part of the national character ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... vertical line appeared on his small forehead; but he evidently concluded, after a deep glance at her, that if she was making game of him it was in no ill- natured spirit—nay, I think that for a few moments he suspected her liveliness to be some method of her own for the incipient stages of ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... passed and the schoolmaster grew calmer, but the party did not recover their previous liveliness. The dinner ended in gloomy silence, and much earlier ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Hotel" on the Boompjes? If this dreary edifice is the "New Bath," what must the Old Bath be like? As I feared to go to bed, I sat in the coffee-room as long as I might; but three young men were imparting their private adventures to each other with such freedom and liveliness that I felt I ought not to listen to their artless prattle. As I put the light out, and felt the bedclothes and darkness overwhelm me, it was with an awful sense of terror—that sort of sensation which I should think going down in a diving-bell would give. Suppose the apparatus goes wrong, and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... infamy. A "rat" was a sort of demon page, a tomboy who was forgiven a trick if it were but funny. The "rat" might take what she pleased; she was to be watched like a dangerous animal, and she brought an element of liveliness into life, like Scapin, Sganarelle, and Frontin in old-fashioned comedy. But a "rat" was too expensive; it made no return in honor, profit, or pleasure; the fashion of rats so completely went out, that in these days few people knew anything of ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... through with old Roscoe," as he thought of it, and give a bachelor a chance. "Old Roscoe" was the younger, but he had always been the steady wheel-horse of the family. Jim was "steady" enough, but was considered livelier than Roscoe, which in truth is not saying much for Jim's liveliness. As their father habitually boasted, both brothers were "capable, hard-working young business men," and the principal difference between them was merely that which resulted from Jim's being still a bachelor. Physically they were of the same type: dark ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... And the company brought in a new atmosphere, as company always does, something of the disturbance of out-doors, and a good deal of its healthy cheer. The direct news that the thermometer was approaching zero, with a hopeful prospect of going below it, increased to liveliness our satisfaction in the fire. When the cider was heated in the brown stone pitcher, there was difference of opinion whether there should be toast in it; some were for toast, because that was the old-fashioned way, and others were against it, "because it does not taste good" in cider. Herbert ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... clustered around them, and shut out from her the bright, happy life of the past. Her duties were performed as before. With others she was sufficiently animated; but when alone, she was wretched. Thus the months rolled on, till they became a year; and I, who had never been deceived by her occasional liveliness, began to think what I could do to change the current of her thoughts, which seemed to have no ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... himself; and he went heart and soul into the cause of his sovereign. Never was there a gayer, a more prepossessing Cavalier. He could charm even a Roundhead. The harsh and Presbyterian-minded Bishop Burnet, has told us that 'he was a man of a noble presence; had a great liveliness of wit, and a peculiar faculty of turning everything into ridicule, with bold figures and natural descriptions.' How invaluable he must have been in the Common-rooms at Oxford, then turned into guard-rooms, his eye upon some unlucky volunteer Don, who had put off ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... than argument. From the paleness of his cheeks, and the dryness of his lips, you might see that the spirit was indeed willing, though the flesh was weak. The clearness of his eyes, the sharpness of his nose, the liveliness of his forehead, lend to his countenance a decided expression of his belief in the resurrection of life. His principles are settled, not so much because that is required for the happiness of a good conscience, ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... It is this extreme liveliness of the jay which makes it more distressing to the mind to see it pent in a cage than other birds of its family, such as the magpie; just as it is more distressing to see a skylark than a finch in prison, because the lark has an irresistible ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... writes Dr. Landmann, "that Shakespeare owes so much in the liveliness of his dialogues, in smartness of expression, and especially in that predilection for witticisms, quibbles, and playing upon words which he shows in his comedies as well as in his tragedies." There follows a dissertation on the affected styles of Guevara and Gongora, of the Pleiade in France, ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... activity, and rigidity and stiffness come more near to what we understand as death. Yet even in death there is no stillness, there is but a change in the form of activity. The body is no longer alive as an organised community, but in its individual cells: the activity is the liveliness of decomposition. Thus all the world expresses life, and expresses it in a rhythm in which law and order reign supreme, and in which a sweet and ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... was more attentive to his mother; he no more brought his books into the drawing-room, but gave himself to her company. He read to them, but he had little to talk about; and Eliza and Caroline both wished his stupid examination, past and over, that he might be restored to his natural liveliness. ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... of the sprightly, talkative, sanguine child, and to underestimate the intelligence of the child who is less emotional, reacts slowly, and talks little. One occasionally finds a feeble-minded adult, perhaps of only 9- or 10-year intelligence, whose verbal fluency, mental liveliness, and self-confidence would mislead the offhand judgment of even the psychologist. One individual of this type, a border-line case at best, was accustomed to harangue street audiences and had served as "major" in "Kelly's Army," a horde of several hundred unemployed men who a few years ago organized ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... Nichols, Boston, have republished Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange, by JOHN FRANCIS, a work describing the progress of financial speculation in England, with great liveliness of delineation, and illustrated with a variety of personal incidents and scenes of the richest character. The volume is intended to give a popular narrative of the money power of England, in a manner at once interesting and suggestive, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... pecksniffery and sentimentality ever since the days of Irving and Hawthorne. Poe led one of them—as critic more than as creative artist. His scathing attacks upon the Gerald Stanley Lees, the Hamilton Wright Mabies and the George E. Woodberrys of his time keep a liveliness and appositeness that the years have not staled; his criticism deserves to be better remembered. Poe sensed the Philistine pull of a Puritan civilization as none had before him, and combated it with his whole artillery of rhetoric. Another rebel, of course, was ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... great sympathy for anarchist comrades," went on Andrews, feeling a certain liveliness of amusement go ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... delicacy of soul must needs, almost without their knowing it, receive many rude blows, from the very fact of their marriage. (See Meditations entitled The Predestined and Of the Honeymoon.) Most of the means of defence instinctively employed by husbands are nothing but traps set for the liveliness ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... rest, there are some pleasing miscellaneous touches in the letters for these years, and there is a certain liveliness of phrase in them which disappears in the later. It is pleasant to find Mr Arnold on his first visit to Cambridge (where, like a good Wordsworthian, he wanted above all things to see the statue of Newton) saying what all of us say, "I feel ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... is well known to the colonists by the names 'poor soldier,' 'leather-headed jackass,' 'friar-bird,' etc. This curious bird, in common with several other varieties of honey-eaters, is remarkable on account of its extreme liveliness and the singular resemblance of its ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... relish, anxiety, and a little jealousy: that, in a word, which springs from love alone, and not from natural brutality, that roughness which one ordinarily calls "bad temper." When it is love which makes a woman rough, when that alone is the cause of her liveliness, what sort can the lover be who has so little delicacy as to complain of it? Do not these errors prove the violence of passion? For myself, I have always thought that he who knew how to keep himself within proper bounds, was moderately amorous. Can one be so, in effect, without allowing ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... remained for Dolly. The talk was no longer on personal subjects; it went gaily and jovially over all sorts of light matters; an excellent supper was served; and in the novelty and the brightness and the liveliness of all about her, Dolly was in a kind of bewitchment. It was a lull, a pause in the midst of her cares, a still nook to which an eddy had brought her, out of the current; Dolly took the full benefit. She would not think of trouble. Sometimes a swift feeling of contrast swept in upon her, the contrast ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... considerable group of interests called being in love and getting married, with certain attractive and amusing subsidiary developments, such as flirtation and "being interested" in people of the opposite sex. She approached this field with her usual liveliness of apprehension. But here she met with a check. These interests her world promptly, through the agency of schoolmistresses, older school-mates, her aunt, and a number of other responsible and authoritative people, assured her she must on no account think about. Miss Moffatt, the ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... conspicuous by his familiar tone and by the liveliness of his repartees. In him you have a man who does not hesitate to call things by their names. Thus he remarked aloud to M. Francis, from one end of the room to the other: "I say, Francis, that old swindler ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... is over the straw is taken up to the cottages and piled up in an outhouse, or more often in a corner of the kitchen, where it brings a new liveliness of colour. ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... grumbled at its "tone," though the wrath of the editor-in-chief was nothing to Miss Bell's. Mr. Rattray could not remember ever having had before a conversation with a contributor which approached in liveliness or interest the one he sustained with Miss Bell the day after her copy appeared. If he imparted some ideas of expediency, he received some of obligation to artistic truth, which he henceforth associated with Elfrida's expressive eyes and what he called her foreign accent. On the whole, therefore, ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... been expressed, not philosophically but with great liveliness, by Whistler in his Ten O'clock, and has had great influence both upon the thought of many people who care about art and upon the practice of artists. It is, put shortly, that the artist has no concern with the public ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... regular number of toes, is in imminent danger of coming out without them; and there is a third, into which the quiet people go, for it is less noisy than either. There is an immensity of promenading, on crutches and off, with sticks and without, and a great deal of conversation, and liveliness, and pleasantry. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... more liveliness and bustle on the king's highroad in those times, than in these days of stage-coaches, which carry you from one end of the kingdom to another in a few score hours. The gentry rode their own horses or drove in their own coaches, and spent three days on a journey which ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... house in the Strand on the day before the eve of Christmas, Cuthbert saw, by the stir and bustle and liveliness of the courtyard, that the family had plainly returned. On making inquiry he discovered that his surmise was correct, and he walked home resolving to lose no more time in delivering his letter, and wondering if he could contrive ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... except an elder sister, who owned a large farm near the town, but Ella was allowed to bring in her companions from school, boating, skating, and snow-shoeing; this, however, made no difference, for there was an instinctive prudence in her choice of friends; her liveliness was tempered by her mother's society and the quietness of the house. So that she was active and expeditious without being noisy, frank enough, but with ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... has filled my sails, and to crave one single toast in the capacity of the author of these novels; and he would dedicate a bumper to the health of one who has represented some of those characters, of which he had endeavoured to give the skeleton, with a degree of liveliness which rendered him grateful. He would propose "The Health of his friend Bailie Nicol Jarvie"—(loud applause)—and he was sure that when the author of Waverley and Rob Roy drinks to Nicol Jarvie, it would be received with that degree of applause to which that ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... the boy. "We're short-handed here, I can tell you! Takes me and Mr. P. all our time to get the paper out. Why, last week, Mr. P. he didn't have time to write his Editorial! We had to shove an old one in. But lor' bless you, I don't believe anybody reads 'em! Liveliness, and something about turnips—that's what our folks likes. However, they'll have some good stuff this week. We'd a real first-class murder in this town last night. The Mayor! Heard ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... of that money is my own: not one of those transactions has the smallest interest for me or anyone else in the world but him; and even he couldnt stand it if he had to do it all himself. And I'm envied: aye, envied for the variety and liveliness of my job, by the poor devil of a bookkeeper that has to copy all my entries over again. Fifty thousand entries a year that poor wretch makes; and not ten out of the fifty thousand ever has to be referred to again; and when all the figures are counted up ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... expressed best, in which is to be found the most energy, the deepest feeling, the most touching shortness. I think one should prefer the passage of Shakspeare, because the direct mention of the corporal existence gives a magnificent liveliness to the picture, and because the very contrast of the space appears most lively by it; whereas, at the first reading of the other passages, it is not the human being, consisting of body and soul, which comes in our mind, but only the human spirit, of which ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... bearded tit does not occur in Shropshire. The other five are quite common and we shall, I dare say, be able to see all in the course of to-day's walk. The long-tailed tit, so called on account of the great length of the tail feathers, is a very active, lively little bird. Indeed, activity and liveliness belong to all the tit family. See how the little fellow flits from branch to branch, seldom remaining long on one spot. It is a very small bird, almost the smallest British bird we have; of course I am thinking of the tit's ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... by Voltaire, with his usual liveliness, "We shall never again behold the time, when a Duke de la Rochefoucault might go from the conversation of a Pascal or Arnauld, to the theatre of Corneille." This reflection may be more justly applied to the ancients, and it may with much greater truth be said; "The age ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... generally assembled at it. When ample justice had been done to the tea, coffee, cold meats, and humming ale, for all these were furnished in abundance, according to the tastes of the different guests, the conversation began to break out, with all the liveliness and freshness ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... conversation with much liveliness, introducing as subjects always in taste (the Jew is proud of his loyalty) the Queen and the Royal Family, the Emperor and Empress of the French—into which both grandmother and wife entered with zest. Mrs. Cohen the younger showed an accurate memory of distinguished birthdays; ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... know not in what sense life can here be used, unless for alacrity, liveliness, vigour, and in this sense the expression is harsh. Perhaps we may read,—with good lift, with good will, with sincere zeal for my service. I should have proposed,—with good lief, in the same sense, but that I cannot find lief to be a substantive. With good life may however mean, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... Borrow returned from this Spanish journey, which had been full, as we all know, of most entertaining adventures, related with much liveliness and spirit by himself, he was regarded as a kind of 'lion' in the literary circles of London. When we first saw him it was at the house of a lady who took great pleasure in gathering 'celebrities' in various ways ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... most singular equipment, of character and manners which, for many reasons, merit study and description. To much of this, though, as he afterwards proved, it was well known to him, Schiller paid comparatively small attention; his work has lost in liveliness by the omission, more than it has gained ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... a half-hour's interval of play, and then the class of French literature from four till dinner-time at six—a class that was more than endurable on account of the liveliness and charm of Monsieur Durosier, who journeyed all the way from the College de France every Saturday afternoon in June and July to tell us boys of the quatrieme all about Villon and Ronsard, and Marot ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... this superabundant crew, slightly modified—one to drive, one to sit by and see it done, and one to stand up behind and yell—yell when there is anybody in the way, and for practice when there isn't. It all helps to keep up the liveliness and augment the general sense of swiftness and energy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... other. They sometimes appear involved, to an ordinary mind, from their length, and the abundance of illustration and explanation which they embrace; but the extraordinary vigor with which the delivery is kept up, and the liveliness of fancy or of humor that flashes at every turn of the thought, soon dispel the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... it did not seem in any way shocking or out of tune with those feelings which the sight of a dying Christian must be supposed to awaken. The unsuitableness in point of natural feeling between scenes of mourning and scenes of liveliness did not at all present itself. But I did feel that if at that moment any of those faults had been brought before me which sometimes occur amongst us; had I heard that any of you had been guilty of falsehood, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Nisida in that vale, and though many bitter reflections, deep regrets, and vague apprehensions crowded upon her soul; yet the liveliness of the scene appeared to diminish the intenseness of the feelings of utter solitude, and its soft influence partially lulled the waves of her emotions. For never had mortal eyes beheld finer fruit upon the trees, nor lovelier flowers upon the soil; ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... been published for many a day a more remarkable book on France than this, which professes to be the impressions of a Flaneur.... It has all the liveliness and sparkle of a work written only for amusement; it has all the solidity and weight of a State paper; and we expect for it not a little political influence as a fair, full, and masterly statement of the Imperial policy—the first and only good account that has been given to Europe ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... 'e misses you," retorted Mrs. Kybird, unable to restrain herself; "'e must miss your conversation and what I might call your liveliness." ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... his interview with Lady Annabel, and her gracious reception of his overtures, Lord Cadurcis was in one of those frolic humours, which we have before noticed was not unnatural to him. He had considerable powers of mimicry, and the talent that had pictured to Venetia in old days, with such liveliness, the habits of the old maids of Morpeth, was now engaged on more considerable topics; an interview with a pasha, a peep into a harem, a visit to a pirate's isle, the slave-market, the bazaar, the barracks of the janissaries, all touched with irresistible vitality, and coloured ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Macintosh described Mr. Hall, when in his twentieth year, as attracting notice by a most ingenuous and intelligent countenance, by the liveliness of his manners, and by such indications of mental activity as could not be misinterpreted. His appearance was that of health, yet not of robust health, and he suffered from paroxysms of pain, during which he would roll about on the carpet in ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Sheridan was a frequenter; but with the name of Fox has that of the Duchess been more associated than of aught other. Her supremacy among these companions was not in the manner of the French Salon leaders,—while wit, knowledge, and tact were hers, she lived not by learning, but by her liveliness and jollity. She was not the scholar in politics, but the politician ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... Prize-money is certainly a great stain on the chivalry of all navies, but it is a stain with which the noble wishes to be as deeply dyed as the plebeian. Human nature is singularly homogeneous on the subject of money; and younger-son nature, in the lands of majorats and entails, enjoys a liveliness of longing on the subject, that is quite as conspicuous as the rapacity of the veriest plebeian who ever picked ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... she; but appeared to be under an agreeable confusion, every lady, by her eye, seeming to think she had met with a deserved rebuke; and which not seeming to expect, it abated her liveliness all the ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... of wheels distracted the attention every moment, and curiosity was keenly on the alert to catch a glimpse of the various magnates whose arrival was expected. At the Queen's Head stood a large array of carriages, and the streets were thronged with gay groups of pedestrians, and full of bustle and liveliness. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... of Mr. C.B. COCHRAN, who announces that the oak-parlour used in his play at the St. Martin's Theatre will be sold by auction at the conclusion of the run, has not unnaturally provoked a certain liveliness in architectural circles. Should advertisements of houses for sale ever reappear in the newspapers, it is thought likely that they may include something ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... happy smile never left Col. Zane's face, and as he saw the well-laden rafts coming down the river, and the air of liveliness and animation about the growing settlement, his smile broadened into one of pride and satisfaction. The prophecy that he had made twelve years before was fulfilled. His dream was realized. The wild, beautiful spot where ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... I observed the strange similarity between his spoken and his written words. I admired the charming simplicity with which he abandoned himself to the pleasures of imagination, his superabundant intelligence, the liveliness of his impressions and his total absence of arrogance ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... wholly that of the serving-woman. We noted in her the liveliness of wit seldom absent from the Italian poor. She was a great babbler, and talked willingly to herself, and to inanimate things, when there was no other chance for talk. She was profuse in maledictions of bad weather, which she held up to scorn as that dog of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... "His own liveliness and unreserve, on a more intimate acquaintance, would not be long in dispelling that charm of poetic sadness, which to the eyes of distant observers hung about him; while the romantic notions, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... naval battle of the Great War was fought on August 28, 1914. "A certain liveliness in the North Sea" was reported through the press by the British admiralty on the 19th of August. Many of the smaller vessels of the fleet of Admiral von Ingenohl, the German commander, such as destroyers, light cruisers, and scouting cruisers, were sighted. Shots between these and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... assented, and bade them to the feast. They ate and drank merrily, and the gayest of the company was the lovely Isole. Her spirits seemed somewhat too wild even to Blackburn, but he did not check her, though surprised at the excessive liveliness and freedom of her sallies. Her eyes flashed like fire, and there was not a man present but was madly in love with her, and ready to dispute for her smiles with ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... none ought to blame her because she failed of success. All her stock of novels she lent to Laura, who read them, every one, in secret, skipping only the dull and didactic pages. That she was not spoiled by this experiment was due less to the strength of Laura's understanding than to the liveliness of her temper, which, in this strait, stood her in very good stead of more solid qualities and a wiser experience. As it was, she learned to talk in a romantic fashion, longed, above all things, to grow thin, pretended to sigh frequently, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... one place in the market there was to-day an especial liveliness and activity among the crowd, and to that spot Signor Gianettino bent his steps. He had seen the cook of the Spanish ambassador, the Duke of Grimaldi, among those collected there, and as this cook was one of his bitterest enemies and opponents, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... was a spurt of unusual liveliness from the Indian quarter. Several white men were killed, and it was Captain Donnelley who was selected to head one of the posses and risk the brunt of the battle. The Captain's scrapbook, which he was kind ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... almost from birth. The difficulty is that these cases are very rare, very difficult to distinguish; while every mother, who knows that a child may be a prodigy, is convinced that her child is that one. They go further; they mistake the common signs of growth for marks of exceptional talent. Liveliness, sharp sayings, romping, amusing simplicity, these are the characteristic marks of this age, and show that the child is a child indeed. Is it strange that a child who is encouraged to chatter and allowed to say anything, who is restrained ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Quiroga's liveliness vanished like a dream. His caressing voice became plaintive; he bowed lower, gave the Chinese salutation of raising his clasped hands to the height of his face, and groaned: "Ah, Senor Simoun! I'm ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... majority. Some beautiful faces and forms were clothed in rags; the plaited hair and necks of these even were loaded with ornaments. The females were rather under the middle stature, strongly built, and possess considerable vivacity, and liveliness. The complexion of those not much exposed to the sun ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... away, of course," Prudence agreed. "But you'll find our liveliness tiring. Whenever you do ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... queint, the resemblance Of him that hath in me so fresh liveliness, That to put other men in remembrance Of his Person I have here the likeness Do make, to the end in Soothfastness, That they that of him have lost thought and mind, By this peniture ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... silent little girl, and did not possess that liveliness of disposition which renders some children such excellent companions. She seldom laughed, and had not the faculty of making many words about small matters. But the love and earnestness of her heart taught her how to amuse ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Henry the Fowler, German King, and Pope Leo not on speaking terms with him, St. Wenceslaus of Bohemia trying to make peace with Henry, and a make-weight of German counts and churchmen, possibly representatives of Vikings, Hungarians and Saracens. The proceedings would have been marked by a "certain liveliness," as we used to say at the front when the fur began to fly. The Conference would have differed from those of the present day, by leading to a definite result if only in the form of a handsome row of corpses; Counts of the Marches, Vikings and others would have attended to that. It would have ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... one passenger on board that seems perfectly happy, if one may judge from the liveliness of the songs with which he greets us whenever we approach his cage. It is "Harry," the captain's goldfinch—"the captain's mate," as the sailors term him. This pretty creature has made no fewer than twelve voyages ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... in this poem, complicating the plot until it seems hopelessly involved to most modern readers, but, owing to the many romantic situations, to the picturesque verse, and to the unflagging liveliness of style, this epic is still popular in Italy. It has besides given rise to endless imitations, not only in Italian but in many other languages. It forms part of the great Charlemagne Cycle, of which the last ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... neck, and then taking the sword laid it gently on his shoulder, muttering all the time between his teeth with the same air of devotion. Then he directed one of the ladies to gird on his sword, which she did with equal liveliness and discretion—and she had much need of the latter quality to prevent an explosion of laughter—; however, the specimen which the new knight had just given of his prowess ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... readers, and the way in which she describes the Irish home, the literary partnership of eccentric father and obedient daughter, the visit to France, and Miss Edgeworth's sight of certain French celebrities including Madame de Genlis, is full of liveliness."—Pall Mall Gazette. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... His liveliness was infectious; they all set to work with a will, and in a few moments a crackling wood-fire blazed cheerily on the ground, and the gipsy preparations for the al fresco supper went on apace amid peals of laughter. Soon the fragrance of steaming coffee arose and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... hurried forth to bring them back, met pickets of strange regiments on the same duty; and, after a while, the bugles blew madly for more pickets with officers to control the tumult. The Mavericks had a reputation for liveliness to live up to. But they fell in on the platform next morning in perfect shape and condition; and Kim, left behind with the sick, women, and boys, found himself shouting farewells excitedly as the trains drew away. Life as a Sahib was amusing so far; but he touched it with ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... creatures, as active as cats, and at Bampton Fair, where many hundreds are driven in for the last Thursday in October, and the narrow streets are packed with them from end to end, there are scenes of great liveliness and disorder. Dulverton, which is the centre of Exmoor, used also to have a fair, which consisted mainly of Exmoor ponies and sheep; but it has passed out of existence by reason of railways and shops, and the greater facility for commercial exchange of our era, and the charming ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... plunged in these gloomy soliloquies, he heard the tramp of a horse on the other side of his enclosure, and a strong clear bass voice singing with the liveliness inspired by a ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... chaps, for Gossake," murmured Cooper. "Guarantee there'll be none o' this liveliness in the mornin', when you got ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... his long absence from England, during the most brilliant period of his powers, we are indebted for all those interesting letters which compose the greater part of the Second Volume of this work, and which will be found equal, if not superior, in point of vigour, variety, and liveliness, to any that have yet adorned ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the cathedral, proceeded in the direction of Wood-street. Preparations were everywhere making for carrying the Lord Mayor's orders into effect; and such was the beneficial result anticipated, that a general liveliness prevailed, on reaching his master's residence, he found him at the shutter, curious to know what was going forward; and having informed him, the grocer immediately threw him down money ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... scarlet wheels came upon them out of the infinite along the sands from Littlestone, grew nearer and larger and more audible, honk-honking and emitting weird cries, and generally threatening liveliness of the most aggressive type. "Good heavens!" ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... with all his eyes. Perhaps he fancied from D'Artagnan's liveliness that he would leave with Porthos, so as not to lose the conclusion of a scene well begun. But, clear-sighted as he was, Aramis deceived himself. Porthos and Moliere left together: D'Artagnan remained with Percerin. Why? From curiosity, doubtless; ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... this particular evening did not promise any marked increase in the general liveliness. Mrs. Ashburn announced lugubriously to all whom it might concern that she had eaten no lunch; Martha mentioned that a Miss Hornblower had called that afternoon—which produced no sensation, though Cuthbert seemed for a moment inclined to ask who Miss Hornblower might happen to be, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... wit and the liveliness of your character the busiest years of my life and reign. That pleasant memory will never leave me, and separated though we be, as good sense and propriety of every kind demands, we shall still belong to each other in thought. Athenais will always be to me the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... moment Lady Henry's door-bell presented itself. The vigor with which Sir Wilfrid rang it may, perhaps, have expressed the liveliness of his unspoken scepticism. He did not for one moment believe that General Warkworth's letters had been the subject of the conversation he had witnessed that morning in the Park, nor that filial veneration had had anything whatever to say ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... high degree of physical capacity for the most effective performance of the selling process. You need health, virility, energy, liveliness, and endurance, in order to sell effectively the idea that you are physically able to fill the job you want most. Physical incapacity is a handicap in almost any vocation. It can be remedied. It must be remedied as fully as possible ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... farthing. A merry grig; a fellow as merry as a grig: an allusion to the apparent liveliness of a ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... their dignities, to the winds as lightly as they have discarded the traditional costumes of Rotten Row. The young girls and young men in flapping panamas, in tunics and jackets of every kind and color, gave certainly an agreeable liveliness to the spectacle, which their elders emulated by expressions of taste as personal and unconventional. A lady in the old-fashioned riding-habit and a black top-hat with a floating veil recalled a former day, but she was obviously riding to lose weight, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... but its liveliness was not all thievery and violence. "On November 5th," the Dickinson Press announces, "the citizens of Little Missouri opened a school." Whom they opened it for is dark as the ancestry of Melchizedek. But from somewhere some one ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... freshness, youth, and spring, and more suitable to be worn in the spring of the year and by young persons, than later in the season or by mature women. Dark green, like crimson and orange, is a warmer, more intensified color, with less of liveliness and freshness. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Schwarzwald valleys, and caused the young tufts and grasses to swell visibly in a few hours. After the Baden slopes the flat thoroughfares of 'Charles's Rest' seemed somewhat uninteresting, though a busy fair which was proceeding in the streets created a quaint and unexpected liveliness. On reaching the old-fashioned inn in the Lange-Strasse that they had fixed on, the women of the party betook themselves to their rooms and showed little inclination to see more of the world that day than could be gleaned from ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... be as old as the world, and to bear date from the first time that man and woman was: therefore in this, as in the finest metal, the freshest wits have in all ages shown their best workmanship. So amongst others these gentlemen, which with what sweetness of voice and liveliness of action they then expressed it, they which were of her Majesty's right ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... written by William Cowper in the year 1782, when Lady Austin was lodging in the Vicarage at Olney, and spent every evening with Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, cheering Cowper greatly by her liveliness. One evening she told the story of John Gilpin's ride in a way that tickled the poet's fancy, set him laughing when he woke up in the night, and obliged him to turn it next day into ballad rhyme. Mrs. Unwin's son sent it to the Public Advertiser, for the poet's corner. ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... was it that the coon learned "generations ago"? What does the author mean here? Do you know anything of the Darwinian theory of life? What has it to do with what is said here about the coon? How does the author make you feel the variety and liveliness of the bird life which he observes? What shows his keenness of sight? What do you know about weasels? Is it, true that "one's woods are what one makes them"? Do you think the author judges the hunter too harshly? How does the author make you feel the charm ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... There is a liveliness and pungency to this water which makes it a pleasant beverage. An abundance of gas, so much desired in a mineral spring, is so intimately associated with the water, and is so well "fixed" as to hold the medicinal constituents in a clear and ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... shouting their adieux at the door. With her other merits, she is an excellent daughter, and supports her mother by the labor of her hands. It would be difficult to conceive beforehand how much can be added to the enjoyment of a household by mere sunniness of temper and liveliness of disposition; for her intellect is very ordinary, and she never says anything worth hearing, or even laughing at, in itself. But she herself is an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... otherwise aimless excursions Mrs. Sewell appeared, and infused a gleam of hope into her husband's breast. Apparently she brought none to Barker; or perhaps he did not conceive it polite to show any sort of liveliness before a lady. He did what he could with the hand she gave him to shake, and answered the brief questions she put to him about his family to precisely the same effect as he had already reported its condition ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... the conversation to the times which had now, within a few short years, become the "ancien regime." She brought back that period to the count's mind by the liveliness of her remarks and sketches, and gave him so many opportunities to display his wit, by cleverly throwing repartees in his way, that he ended by thinking he had never been so charming; and that idea having rejuvenated him, he endeavored to inspire this seductive ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... possible past or future life in his characters that he periphrases death into a disappearance from the page of history, as if they were bodiless and soulless creatures of pen and ink; mere names, not things. Picturesqueness he sternly avoids as the Delilah of the philosophic mind, liveliness as a snare of the careless investigator; and so, stopping both ears, he slips safely by those Sirens, keeping safe that sobriety of style which his fellow-men call by another name. Unhappy books, which we know by heart before we read them, and which a mysterious superstition yet compels ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... said at last as youth and beauty whirled by in a maelstrom of modern Terpsichorean liveliness, "she is a great success. I don't know whether it is quite what ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... approaches and manners" of the reverend gentleman are not considered such "as to attach and endear his congregation to him." He is reported to be subject "to an occasional exuberance of animal spirits, and at times to display a liveliness of manner and conversation which would be repugnant to the feelings of a large portion of the congregation of Banff." Others of the objections assert, that his illustrations in the pulpit do not bear upon his text—that his subjects are incoherent ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... old gentleman, pleased with Miss Mannering's liveliness and attention, rattled away for her amusement and his own, the impatience of Colonel Mannering began to exceed all bounds. He declined sitting down at table, under pretence that he never ate supper; and traversed the parlour, in which they were, with ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... You can see their minds grow by what they feed on, when they travel. There are many books of travel, by women, that are, at least, entertaining, and contain some penetrating and just observations. There has, however, been none since Lady Mary Wortley Montague, with as much talent, liveliness, and preparation to observe in various ways, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... long and anxiously at her and then went with a sigh to telephone her mother, and the evening, which Mrs. Wetherby described as "a little gathering of the young folks," got under way. Jane played cards sedately for the earlier part of it and joined with conscientious liveliness in the games which came later, just before Mrs. Wetherby's conception of "light refreshments" was served,—pineapple and banana salad with whipped cream and maraschino cherries on it, three kinds of exceptionally sweet ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... girl smiled and beckoned with a sort of intimate liveliness and understanding that quite warmed Craven's heart. There was a table free, just one, under Vesuvius erupting. Craven took it, quickly ordered all the Italian dishes he could think of and a bottle of Chianti Rosso, and then looked about the long, little room. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... I who brought your son to Compiegne—where he is a universal favourite, from his wit and liveliness. I know no one who is a more ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... now!" cried Mrs. Vrain, with a liveliness rather subdued in compliment to her apparel; "and his real name was Mark Vrain. Well, I guess he won't need no name now, poor man," and the widow touched her bright eyes carefully with a doll's pocket-handkerchief, ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... year, when every outward relation was pleasant for her, this inward life was not so active, and she was distinguished from other girls of her circle only by the more intellectual nature, which displayed itself chiefly in the eyes, and by a greater liveliness which, however, never passed the bounds ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... the village is entirely animated by the spirit of the olden time; in its expectation of the pleasure, in its liveliness, in its ardor, it is intensely Basque and very old,—under the great shade of the Gizune, the overhanging mountain, which throws over it ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... shake hands with me. He was of the middle height, about five feet eight or nine. My first impression of him was of a dark, grave face, with a great deal in it, changing from the liveliness of conversation to a gravity of scrutiny. After we had shaken hands, I passed to the other end of the room to greet other friends. We did not speak to each ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... many-sided yet concentrated malice which supplied the stock in trade of Abraham Hayward. More recent losses have been heavier still. Just ten years ago[15] died Mr. Matthew Arnold, who combined in singular harmony the various elements which go to make good conversation—urbanity, liveliness, quick sympathy, keen interest in the world's works and ways, the happiest choice of words, and a natural and never-failing humour, as genial as it was pungent. It was his characteristic glory that he knew how to be a man of ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... health had not destroyed the vividness of impression that belongs to the inexperienced, was delighted at the cheeriness of all around her. As she leaned lightly on Trevylyan's arm, he listened with a forgetful joy to her questions and exclamations at the stir and liveliness of a city from which was to commence their pilgrimage along the Rhine. And indeed the scene was rife with the spirit of that people at once so active and so patient, so daring on the sea, so cautious on the land. Industry was visible ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... uninteresting distance of excessive azure (simple blue country, observe), is one of the chief wonders of the painting: so that this masterpiece can no more furnish an apology for the continuance of a practice which, though it gives some liveliness of character to the warehouses of Amsterdam, is fit only for a place whose foundations are mud, and whose inhabitants are partially animated cheeses,—than Caravaggio's custom of painting blackguards should introduce ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... of this faculty we may suppose even the greatest poet to possess, there can not be a doubt but that the language which it will suggest to him must, in liveliness and truth, fall far short of that which is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of those passions, certain shadows of which the poet thus produces, or feels to be ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... his vague annoyance, he found Baker. Usually the liveliness of that able young citizen was welcome, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White |
