"Racy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... corrupt the mind of the simple. Democracy in England has been the chief representative of veritable Englishness up to these days. It was never Latinized or Frenchified. The cottage garden refused to follow the bad example of the "carpet-bedder." The poor have always been racy of the soil. They have laughed at the absurdities of fashion and seen through the pretensions of wealth. They have believed in heartiness and cheerfulness. All their proverbs spring out of a keen sense ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... avoided treating his subject from a too human point of view, and we are paying him a very high compliment when we say that the more we study the work the more we are impressed with what we may best describe as the "vegetability" of the writer's mind. The book is racy of the soil; it is written in a charming and convincing style, and bears the stamp of imaginative originality. An acquaintance to whom we lent the book admirably expresses the impression we had formed of it by saying that it might have been written by EUSTACE or HALLIE MILES. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... that is quite contagious. As a writer of simple narrative, his imagination sometimes outstrips his discretion, but every one who reads his book will admit that he is not often surpassed for the fresh and racy character of his anecdotes. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... and racy" scenes that came off in the Convention, we will leave our several friends from Nashville, who were there as reporters in the Convention for the American papers, to set forth. With more truth than poetry, the "unterrified Democracy" convened at Cincinnati can say, "Our ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... no question, I think, that Arthur's grave and humorous ways attracted her. He, when at his best, was a racy and paradoxical talker—with that natural tinge of veiled melancholy or cynicism half-suspected which is so fascinating, as seeming to imply a "past," a history. He ventured to speak to her more than once about her tendency to "drift." He told me ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... power as a player, and his works written for the violin. Spohr was a man of immense self-assertion, and believed in the greatness of his own musical genius as a composer in the higher domain of his art. His "Autobiography," one of the most fresh, racy, and interesting works of the kind ever written, is full of varied illustrations of what Chorley stigmatizes his "bovine self-conceit." His fecund production of symphony, oratorio, and opera, as well as of the more elaborate forms of chamber music, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... sea-captain, whom I disturbed in his nap to inquire whether he let lodgings. As it happened, he didn't. Then (as I very nearly went back and told him) what right had he to sport a brass plate? However, I got some good racy dialogue for the Nautical ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... popular journal that had been founded in 1790, the papers entitled "The Lay Preacher," upon which rests his literary fame. Of this magazine he became editor in 1796, and at once gathered about him a number of noble swelling spirits who contributed racy and original reading to the ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... of articles, written from the Seat of Hostilities, and for another, Bingo was on the Staff, and it would be so nice for him, poor dear, to have his wife near him in case he happened to get ... was "chipped" the proper technical term, or "potted"? The articles were intended to be the real thing—racy of the soil, don't you know? and full of "go" and atmosphere. Let it be said here that they achieved raciness. The London print in which they appeared came to be christened by the scoffer and the incredulous ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... talking eagerly and with the naivete of a child, wondered why he had never liked this man so much before. And Larch told the somewhat abject story of his life three times with an introduction of much racy anecdote. ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... in addition to vigorous and fearless comments on the events of the times, genial gossip with the reader on all current topics, and also devote abundant space to those racy specimens of American wit and humor, without which there can be no perfect exposition of our national character. Among those who will contribute regularly to this department may be mentioned the name of CHARLES ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... dandiest little affair I ever did see," said Frank half enviously. "Just big enough for two of us." He glanced over to the boy-size automobile standing in the shade. It was a long, racy looking toy, closer to the ground than a motorcycle, but evidently equipped with a good-sized engine. "Where did you get ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... a snaky slim cowpuncher on a racy horse intensified this impression in Pan's mind, stamped the future more vividly on his heart. It was what he had been ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... trotting the globe—an exercise foreign to his habit—when he went on to Australia for a reason racy of his blood. He wished to witness a certain game of cricket between the full strength of Australia and an English team which included one or two young men of his acquaintance. It was no part of his original scheme to see ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... extraction, the price of transportation, and the expense of reduction, and that then a ton of the raw ore will net them twelve hundred dollars. The estimate may be extravagant. Cut it in twain, and the product is enormous, far transcending any previous developments of our racy Territory. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of novels:—"Vivian Gray" Was positively charming, And "Almack's" infinitely gay, And "Frankenstein" alarming; I said "De Vere" was chastely told. Thought well of "Herbert Lacy," Called Mr. Banim's sketches "bold," And Lady Morgan's "racy;" I vowed the last new thing of Hook's Was vastly entertaining; And Laura said—"I dote on books, Because it's ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the eye of a craftsman for striking effects and incidents.... The "Return from Market," "The Marriage Bargain," and the last scene ... have the illusion of life, and are in a phrase—which, though blunted by misuse, expresses a real need in Irish Art—"racy ...
— The Turn of the Road - A Play in Two Scenes and an Epilogue • Rutherford Mayne
... carried with me, and which was as novel as it was popular with those who listened to it. The chief personages in the social circle besides my friend the lieutenant were Major Molloy, who was in command, a racy and juicy old campaigner, with a face like a sunset, and the surgeon, Dr. Dudeen, a long, dry, humorous genius, with a wealth of anecdotical and traditional lore at his command that I have never seen surpassed. ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... been merely disagreeable. He had infinite wit in him. It was his carnal genius that saved him. He wrote sixty books, and two of them—the "Siege of the Town of Mansoul" and the "Pilgrim's Progress"—exceed all ever written for creative swiftness of imagination, racy English speech, sentences of literary art, cunningness in dialogue, satire, ridicule, and surpassing knowledge of the picturesque ways of the obscure minds of common men. In his pages men rise out ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... beautiful one!—which of the world's streams canst thou envy, with thy beauty and renown? Stately is the Danube, rolling in its might through lands romantic with the wild exploits of Turk, Polak, and Magyar! Lovely is the Rhine! on its shelvy banks grows the racy grape; and strange old keeps of robber-knights of yore are reflected in its waters, from picturesque crags and airy headlands!—yet neither the stately Danube, nor the beauteous Rhine, with all their fame, though abundant, needst thou envy, thou pure island stream!—and far less yon ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... praise. The spirited talk, flying thus helter-skelter through the gamut of opinion, went forward chiefly in German, which the foreigners of the party spoke with various accents, but glibly enough; only now and then did one of them spring over to his mother-tongue, to fetch a racy idiom ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... they were almost the only readers of his published writings. They came to call him Bishop Bunyan. His native genius, his great human-heartedness and loving-kindness, his burning zeal and indomitable courage, his racy humor and kindling imagination, all vitalized by the spiritual force which came upon him through the encompassing atmosphere of devout Puritanism, were consecrated to the welfare of his fellow-men. His personal friend, Mr. Doe, describes ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Froude's style is not obscure. Too original to be an imitator, he was in his handling of English an apt pupil of Newman. There is the same ease, the same grace, the same lightness of elastic strength. Froude, like Newman, can pass from racy, colloquial vernacular, the talk of educated men who understand each other, to heights of genuine eloquence, where the resources of our grand old English tongue are drawn out to the full. His vocabulary was large and various. He was familiar with every ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... him spread out, moving nearer to me; and they laughed at his comical threat—which sounded all the more humorous from the Irishman's racy brogue, which became all the more prominent when Garry was at all excited. God knows, though, their merriment, untimely as it might have sounded to outside ears, betrayed no want of sympathy with their comrade. They laughed, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... may be but a dull commoner, one of the third or fourth estate. But for all that, he has a comfortable fund of the vis comica, upon which he rubs along pleasantly enough, hospitably entertaining not a few congenial spirits who can put up with him as they find him, relish his simple and often racy fare, and enjoy a decent quantum of jokes of his own growing, without pining after the brilliant banquets of comedy spread by opulent barons ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... the Colonial directness and vividness of speech; a larger, freer diction upon the whole than that of the Londoner born and bred; more racy, less clipped and formal, but, in certain ways, more correct. The society cliche, and the society fads of abbreviation and accent, were missing; and in their place was an easy, idiomatic directness, distinctly ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... repartee that endear Mr. John Burns' speeches to the multitude. His sayings and phrases are quoted. His wit is the wit of the Londoner—the wit that Dickens knew and studied, the wit of the older cabmen and 'bus drivers, the wit of the street boy. It is racy, it is understood, and the illustrations are always concrete and massive, never vague or unsubstantial. Apt Shakespearian quotations, familiar and unfamiliar, embellish the speeches. Personality, vital ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... rejoice the heart of many a lad. Mr. Turley knows boys and writes lovingly of them. His story is vivacious, the heroes are real live ones, the style is racy and true to reality in its descriptions of masters, boys and sports, and even in its use of school slang, the book throughout is clean, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... meat-eaters began to look upon it as a bad omen, and to wonder why a baseless rumour should stir up so much indignation. Tales of this kind, whether or not they tallied with probability, had come to be pooh-poohed, to be treated with disdain. Hence it was rather odd that an anecdote so racy should excite ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... events, but rarely practised those Cadmean arts. Yet they could tell the time of day by the sun, and steer through the silent night by the stars; and each of them had—as Emerson, a very bookish person, has said—a dial in his mind for the whole bright calendar of the year. How racy was their talk; how wise their judgments on men and things; how well they did all that at the moment seemed worth doing; how universally useful was their garnered experience—their acquired learning! How wily were these illiterates in the pursuit of game—how ready in an emergency! ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... permission to receive her answer from her own lips. He was guarded enough; but on the way home I met Clinton who had been one of the guests at Mistress Katie's attempted wedding last week. He gave me details. Here they are." And these details lost nothing through Edmonson's racy recital of them. "No, Bulchester," he finished, "out of six people that I could name mixed up in this affair, on the whole, I am the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... right, because the wrong is sure to be almost right and the truth on its side neglected,—the letters are full of fresh, acute, and even profound ideas, sharp exposition of those primary objects of government which demagogues and buncombe legislators ignore, racy wit, sarcasm, and description (in one passage he rises for a moment into really blood-stirring rhetoric), and proofs of his capacity thus early for reducing the confused cross-currents of daily life to the operation of great embracing laws. No ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Hyperborean regions, and add its generous warmth to Transatlantic banquets. Even as it is now made, with very little care bestowed on cultivation and none to speak of on selection of the grape, the wine is rich and noble, slightly rough to a sophisticated palate, but clean in quality and powerful and racy. It deserves the enthusiasm attributed by Redi ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... dimly manifested. The structure of the verse, sometimes so stately and majestic, is frequently disfigured by the commonest faults; yet the breath of a lofty purpose has been breathed upon every page. The personality of the author never pierces through his theme. The language is fresh, racy, vigorous, and utterly free from the impress of modern masters: much of it might have been written by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... of course, intentionally cast in a homely style in contrast to the courtliness of the main plot; but Greene, as some of his later works attest, knew the value of strong racy English no less than his friend Nashe, who, in the preface he prefixed to this very work, pushed colloquialism and idiom to the verge of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... made upon all the camps and bungalows round the station. Croquet, badminton, and other games go on until dinner-time. I could linger lovingly over a camp dinner; the rare dishes, the sparkling conversation, the racy anecdote, and the general jollity and brotherly feeling; but we must all dress for the ball, and so about 9 P.M. the buggies are again in requisition for the ball room—the fine, large, central apartment in ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... part of it,' he replied, with a return to his former embarrassment; 'she does not seem to care for me now at all. Indeed, she positively refuses me. She says—to put it in the dear child's own racy language—that she wouldn't take me on at any price. She says it would be like marrying a clockwork figure without the key. She's more frank than ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... earliest of which may date from about the year 1500 B.C. The Hindus, or, as they call themselves, the Aryas, had by that time entered India, and were dwelling in the north-western portion, the Panjab. The hymns, we may say, are racy of the soil. There is no reference to the life led by the people before they crossed the Himalaya Mountains or entered by some ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... why it is dangerous to omit it—our guest is a distinguished citizen of the Great Republic beyond the seas. In America his 'Huckleberry Finn' and his 'Tom Sawyer' are what 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Tom Brown's School Days' have been to us. They are racy of the soil. They are books to which it is impossible to place any period of termination. I will not speak of the classics—reminiscences of much evil in our early lives. We do not meet here to-day as critics with our appreciations and depreciations, our twopenny little prefaces ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... are redolent of the hearty fun and strong masculine sense of our old friend Sam Slick. The last work of Mr. Haliburton is quite equal to the first. Every page of the 'Old Judge' is alive with rapid, fresh sketches of character; droll, quaint, racy sayings; good-humoured practical jokes; ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... interests. You see, my mother—father died ten years before she did—my mother, being dotty about the innate superiority of the male, left me in control of practically everything, and I do as well by it as the more important occupation of farming will permit. Which completes the racy ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... the record of rich men buying costly books which they know nothing about and never become acquainted with, is an illustration of a wholesome truth, pervading all human endeavours after happiness. It is this, that the active, racy enjoyments of life—those enjoyments in which there is also exertion and achievement, and which depend on these for their proper relish—are not to be bought for hard cash. To have been to him the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... sensuous literature of England drop from our people's hands. Let us encourage native genius to dip her pen into the old holy well of Catholic truth, and build up a literature that will be racy of the soil and redolent of its Faith. Let us feed the minds of the young on the untainted productions of our own countrymen and women. Let us brace them with robust Catholic principles that are mortised ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... above; To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks; Whose fireside stories, grave or gay, In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way, With old New England's flavor rife, Waifs from her rude idyllic life, Are racy as the legends old By Chaucer or Boccaccio told; To her who keeps, through change of place And time, her native strength and grace, Alike where warm Sorrento smiles, Or where, by birchen-shaded isles, Whose summer winds have shivered o'er The icy drift ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Jack' used to come and dine and sleep at my old home to keep his birthday, in company with my father and mother. At such times we as children used to come down to dessert to hear him tell stories in his racy way of Katerfelto, of long gallops over Exmoor after the stag, or of hard runs after the little 'red rover' ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... Matthew Grant, who landed in 1630 and was Surveyor of Connecticut for over forty years. Grant's mother was one of the Simpsons who had been Pennsylvanians for several generations. His family was therefore as racy of the North as Lee's was of the South. His great-grandfather and great-granduncle, Noah and Solomon Grant, held British commissions during the final French-and-Indian or Seven Years' War (1756-63) when both were killed in the same campaign. His grandfather Noah served all ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... full of flowers, and its bright Lehigh fire, and softly cushioned chairs; that cozy parlor, where the little round table, with its snowy cloth, had been so often spread; and the fragrant coffee, and delicate tea-biscuit, and racy newspaper had been so often discussed; where John, in his slippers and dressing-gown, with his dark hair pushed off his broad forehead, read to us page after page of some favorite author, while the wind was welcome to whistle itself dumb ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... his horses graze, but ever he saw that the riders were close at hand, and that the horses did not get out on the slope of sage. He sat back and gloried in the sight. He owned bands of mustangs; near by was a field of them, fine and mettlesome and racy; yet Bostil had eyes only for the blooded favorites. Strange it was that not one of these was a mustang or a broken wild horse, for many of the riders' best mounts had been captured by them or the Indians. And it was Bostil's supreme ambition to own a great wild stallion. There ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... But in his conversation there was no trace of evil; nothing equivocal; he studiously shunned an indelicacy, never swore, and chiefly abounded in passing puns and witticisms, varied with humorous contrasts between ship and shore life, and many agreeable and racy anecdotes, very tastefully narrated. In short—in a merely psychological point of view, at least—he was a charming blackleg. Ashore, such a man might have been an irreproachable mercantile swindler, circulating ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... learned the story of the intrigue, and had declared that she would never suffer the mistress's presence at her Court: and as soon as she discovered the name of the newly presented lady, she showed her sense of the indignity by bursting into tears, and by retiring from the room. The racy scandal of a royal disagreement was thus published to the Court, and Charles was speedily confirmed in feeling that his own authority was concerned in dealing firmly with an unseemly outburst of what he and his chosen companions deemed to ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... is a singularly racy piece of English, in which with the utmost plainness of speech the compilers give their reasons for having dealt with the old services as they have done. This reappears in the English Prayer Book of the present ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... racy, a. fine-flavored, pungent, rich; spirited, piquant, fresh and lively. Antonyms: insipid, vapid, tasteless, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... power of a poet goes, few men have excelled Bacon. He had a mind stored with imagery, able to produce various and vivid illustrations of whatever thought came before him; but these illustrations touched no deep feeling; they were fresh, original, racy, fanciful, picturesque, a play of the head that never touched the heart. The man was by nature cold; he had not the emotional depth or compass of an average Englishman. Perhaps his strongest feeling of an enlarged or generous description was for ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... address before the alumni; several times he secured appropriations for his alma mater from the State. His visits to Athens were always occasions of honor. Young men flocked wherever his voice was heard, fascinated by his racy conversation. No "Disinherited Knight" ever returned to more certain conquest ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... rest of the members of St. Chad's Honor was also on good terms. She could be very amusing and full of racy Irish humour when she liked, and would send the girls into fits of laughter with her quaint sayings and funny stories. Her nickname of "Paddy Pepper-box" stuck to her, and she certainly justified ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... we must wake up to the fact that, as the very heart of our problem, we have a bolshevist nucleus in America composed of virile, red-blooded Americans, racy of our soil and history, whose conditions of life and labor are such as to develop in them the psychology of reckless, despairing, revengeful bolshevism. They really are little concerned with theories of the state and of social development, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... about ten-thirty. On the way we buys the papers, and the first thing we see is a column on the front page about our little imposition. It was a shame the way that reporter intimated that we were no blood relatives of the late George W. Childs. He tells all about the scheme as he sees it, in a rich, racy kind of a guying style that might amuse most anybody except a stockholder. Yes, Atterbury was right; it behooveth the gaily clad treasurer and the pearly pated president and the rugged vice-president of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company to ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... French comedy in the eighteenth century, we shall promptly shut up the volumes of Diderot, and turn to the ease and soft gracefulness of Marivaux's Game of Love and Chance, to the forcible and concentrated sententiousness of Piron's Metromanie, to the salt and racy flavour of Le Sage's Turcaret. Gresset, again, and Destouches wrote at least two comedies that were really fit for the stage, and may be read with pleasure to-day. Neither of these compliments can fairly be paid to The Natural Son and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... about Irish sports and shoneen games the like of lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all to that. And of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Toro Blanco upheld his name. He was a huge, massive, thick-flanked stallion, a kingly mate for his full-bodied, glossy consort, Blanca Reina. The other mare, Blanca Mujer, was dazzling white, without a spot, perfectly pointed, racy, graceful, elegant, yet carrying weight and brawn and range that suggested her relation to ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... 1474 fell on April 10th, thus giving, as the day of the conclusion of the translation, 31 March 1475, the same year being the earliest possible period of its appearance as a printed book." Then there is Caxton's own racy account of the circumstances under ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... Berners shouted at this point. "Jasper, a lute!" And then he halloaed, "Gregory, Madame de Farrington demands that racy song you made against Queen Ysabeau during your last visit." Thus did the Queen begin ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Casey. And you know it. Oh, Casey,"—(I wish your imagination would supply that brogue, because it was such a deliciously soft and racy thing)—"Oh, Casey, Casey! you're a better priest than ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... exist. We shall see enough of the religious melancholy in a future lecture; but melancholy, according to our ordinary use of language, forfeits all title to be called religious when, in Marcus Aurelius's racy words, the sufferer simply lies kicking and screaming after the fashion of a sacrificed pig. The mood of a Schopenhauer or a Nietzsche—and in a less degree one may sometimes say the same of our own sad Carlyle—though often an ennobling sadness, is almost as often only peevishness running ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... 16. Coined in the early 1960s to replace earlier 'sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and later adopted by ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... in anecdote, and could describe graphically the men he had met, the orators he had heard, the occasions of importance where he had been an interested spectator. His conversation was delightfully fresh and racy because of the vividness of the original impressions, the unusual force of the ideas which were the copies of these impressions, and the fine artistic sense which enabled him to determine at once what points should be omitted, and what words ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... remembered, then, that anybody can write English as she "should be wrote," and hence that a certain meed of admiration is due to those who, exercising their right of independent action, succeed in making it at once original and racy, and in conveying, without the least effort, meanings totally opposed to their intention, affording thereby admirable examples of English as "she ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... attraction was the personification of Bailie Jarvie by Charles Mackay, who, being himself a native of Glasgow, entered into the minutest peculiarities of the character with high gusto, and gave the west country dialect in its most racy perfection." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... upon me by various other books, and especially by Fra Paolo Sarpi's "History of the Council of Trent," probably the most racy and pungent piece of ecclesiastical history ever written; and though I also read as antidotes the history of the Council by Pallavicini, and copious extracts from Bossuet, Archbishop Spalding, and Balmez, Father Paul taught me, as an Italian historian phrases ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... And when the polished singer of the King's "Quhair" found himself again in his native land he seems to have burst forth with the most genuine impulse into the broad fun, rustical and natural and racy of the soil, which perhaps was more congenial to his Scottish audience. "Peblis to the Play" and "Christis Kirk on the Green" are poems full of the very breath of rural life and the rude yet joyous meetings of the country folk at kirk and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... But if any of the old disputes came up again, I would certainly speak out my mind next hot-pot day. But you are hardly acquainted with our Darkshire fellows, for all you're a Darkshire man yourself They have such a sense of humour, and such a racy mode of expression! I am getting really to know some of them now, and they talk ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Liversage Spence." It was an attempt, as she explained to me, to return to the rational style and improving tone of Jane Austen, whose novels were sound educators as well as sources of amusement. From Miss Kingsley's natural fluency and sprightliness I expected something "racy," to quote Paul Barr, and I was disappointed to find "Moderation" dull and didactic. It was however heralded and published with a great flourish of trumpets; and Mr. Spence wrote a review of it in one of the leading newspapers under the symbol XXX (a signature ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... warm friends. Winifred saw beneath a light exterior a quantity of good, sound sense and a warm heart. She was a frequent guest at their house. Mrs. Gray liked her, though deploring her occasional indulgence in slang. Mr. Gray enjoyed her racy conversation, and Hubert professed a dislike of her volatile qualities. This last fact grieved Winifred, who liked her ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... mark you, did he reveal his interest in the Street and its doings. By not a single quaver was the cheeriness of his snatchy, racy, merry voice affected. By not the fraction of an inch nor a second was his gay little trot altered. But when the ends of his mustache stood out straight, his friends, no matter how slight was their acquaintance with financial ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... intensified, and the stove in the parlor attracted every one. A San Francisco lady, much "got up" in paint, emerald green velvet, Brussels lace, and diamonds, rattled continuously for the amusement of the company, giving descriptions of persons and scenes in a racy Western twang, without the slightest scruple as to what she said. In a few years Tahoe will be inundated in summer with similar vulgarity, owing to its easiness of access. I sustained the reputation which our country-women bear ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... "The most racy, mischievous role imaginable," said Herode warmly, "and she plays it to perfection—it is her chef d'oeuvre. She is always applauded to the echo ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... will find that Mr. Heady (Uncle Juvinell) has produced a very entertaining and instructive volume. It is written in a racy, sprightly style, that cannot fail to captivate the mind. Partaking himself of the buoyancy and good humor of boyhood, the author is able to write for the boys in a manner that is at once attractive ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... poured him out a cup of tea; gloomily he watched him drink it. Heedless of his gloom, Mr. James plunged into an account of his stay in Scotland, telling of the country, the food, and the people with an agreeable, racy vivacity. Slowly the great cloud lifted from Hilary Vance's ample face. He grew interested; he asked questions; at last ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... up this stuff before you, here in your own garden; I ask your pardon, I ask the pardon of the Princess; and I give you my word of honour as a gentleman and an old man, that when my book of travels shall appear it shall not contain so much as the name of Grunewald. And yet it was a racy chapter! But had your Highness only read about the other courts! I am a carrion crow; but it is not my fault, after all, that the world is such ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of effort he had scarcely an equal. His command of language was extraordinary, tho he had little imagination and his vocabulary was limited; but he possest the faculty of expressing himself in a racy, virile manner, within the apprehension of every reader. As he treated every topic in a practical rather than a philosophical spirit, and with strong feeling rather than infallible logic, so he never wrote above the heads ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Robert, or Bob, as he is commonly called despite his sixty years, is quite a character in his way. He is an amusing old gossip, with a turn for racy comment and a finger in everybody's pie. He knows everything about everybody in ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... telling. He gave a faithful account of the fight, making mention of many incidents which his friend had omitted to touch on, and dwelling particularly on the deeds of Kettle. As to that flat-nosed individual himself, when called upon to speak, he addressed the assembly with a dignity of manner and a racy utterance of language which amazed those who had only known him as a thrall, and who now for the first time met him as a freed man. He moreover introduced into his speech a few touches of humour which convulsed his audience ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... under the star-lit skies all our racy anecdotes are of the fine fast runs we have had with the 8.52, the brave swinging of the tail carriage, the heavy work over the points, the check and find again at East Croydon main.... Those who arrive early ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... detail the early adventures of a Middy with much of that delightful ease we are wont to admire in the writings of Smollett, Fielding, and the character novelists of the latter half of the past century. The style of Captain Marryatt is fresh, vigorous, and racy—"native and to the manner born,"—abounding in lively anecdote, but never straying into caricature—with just enough of the romance of life to keep the incidents afloat from commonplace, and probability above-board. This and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... which, limiting freedom of utterance, were yet but accidents in their origin; as if one vowed not to say "its," which ought to have been in Shakespeare; "his" "hers," for inanimate objects, being but a barbarous and really inexpressive survival. Yet we have known many things like this. Racy Saxon monosyllables, close to us as touch and sight, he will intermix readily with those long, savoursome, Latin words, rich in "second intention." In this late day certainly, no critical process can be conducted reasonably without eclecticism. Of [17] such ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... three-halfpence. "For how much?" quoth Paddy. The bottle was handed to him, and he was told to take as much as he liked. Paddy's joy knew no bounds at this liberality, and, unable to contain his ecstasy, he rushed to the door to communicate the good news to his companions, which he did in the following racy sentence: "Mike! Mike, my sowl! com' an' haf a dhrink—only thruppence for both of us, an' the botthel in yer ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... service by adding a whole group of specifically American figures to the deathless aristocracy of the realms of romance. Then, in the generation which has just passed away, we have such men as Thoreau, racy of his native soil; Longfellow, in his day and way the chief interpreter of America to England; Whittier, so intensely local that, as Professor Matthews puts it, "he wrote for New England rather than for the ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Sam Fisher, however, his manner peeled off him like a skin, and he began to talk as himself, a racy and vigorous self vastly different from the episcopal person he thought it necessary ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... with others, particularly fine—some with tall storehouses of stone or iron, and windows of plate-glass—all the streets with little canals of mountain water running along the sides—plenty of people, "business," modernness—yet not without a certain racy wild smack, all its own. A place of fast horses, (many mares with their colts,) and I saw lots of big greyhounds for antelope hunting. Now and then groups of miners, some just come in, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... these racy descriptions appeal, it is suggested that they familiarize themselves with the "Reprinted Pieces," edited by Charles Dickens the younger, and published in New York in 1896, a much more complete edition, with explanatory notes, than ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... have said," continued the duchess, "try, if you can, to be novel, and be a bodkin only to the victim's face, save, of course, in the case of a new bit of racy scandal. That must be used to the greatest advantage as soon as possible, for scandal, like unsalted butter, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... be distinguished from the ancient; nay, he inserted lines and half lines, with such skill and nicety, that antiquarians are perplexed to settle which is genuine or which is simulated. Yet with all this he abated not of the natural mirth or the racy humour of the lyric muse of Scotland: he did not like her the less because she walked like some of the maidens of her strains, high-kilted at times, and spoke with the freedom of innocence. In these communications we observe how little his border-jaunt among the fountains of ancient ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... grasp whatever of individual character. Even Candide is but a "humour," and Pangloss a very decided one; as are Martin, Gordon in L'Ingenu, and others. His women are all slightly varied outline-sketches of what he thought women in general were, not persons. Plot he never attempted; and racy as his dialogue often is, it is on the whole merely a setting for these very sparkles of wit some ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... but a half-year back cooling my heels in a highland burn, should be now part and parcel of this great Argonaut army. Already my native uncouthness was a thing of the past, and the quaint mannerisms of my Scots tongue were yielding to the racy slang of the frontier. More to the purpose, too, I was growing in strength and wiry endurance. As I looked around me I realised that there were many less fitted for the trail than I, and there was none with such a store of glowing ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... but recourse has also been had to the original edition for the purpose of comparison. The only translation into English hitherto has been that of George Borrow, published in London in 1860, and written in that charming and racy style which characterises his other and better known works. He has, however, fallen into many errors, which were only natural, seeing that the Visions abound in colloquial words and phrases, and in idiomatic forms of expression which ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... yellow stubble, rolling sometimes over a muddy, brown river, and skirting now and then a welcome wooded cleft in the monotony of the landscape. The scenes at those barn-doors were full of the picturesque and of the racy. A farmer with a gun and a brace of rabbits and a dog leaping up at them, while two young women talked to or at the farmer from a distance; a fat little German girl in a Scotch frock, cleaning outside windows with the absorbed seriousness ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... days, was always bright and warm and snug. The air was a little close, perhaps, and heavy, but with a not unpleasant smell of dyes and stuffs and velvet and glue and steam and flatiron and a certain racy scent that Julia Gold, the head trimmer, always used. There was a sociable cat, white with a dark-gray patch on his throat and a swipe of it across one flank that spoiled him for style and beauty but made him a comfortable-looking cat to have around. Sometimes, ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... believer; and such warm, wide sympathies had he, and an imagination so daring, that he undertook to unfold the divine judgment on the multitudinous dead, ranging with inspired vision through hell, and purgatory, and heaven. In his large, hot heart, he lodged the racy, crude beliefs of his age, and with poetic pen wrought them into immortal shapes. The then religious imaginations of Christendom, positive, and gross, and very vivid; the politics of Italy, then tumultuous and embittered; the theology and philosophy of his time, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... fragile ornaments of Europe. The things which are beginning here and which may be completed would be irreparable. They would mean a loss to our race for which nothing could atone. A quite peculiar aspect—familiar, kindly, racy of the soil and unique—of that beauty which a long series of comely human lives is able to acquire and to hoard would disappear for ever from the face of the earth; and we cannot, in the trouble and confusion of these too tragic hours, realize the ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... living boys, with the virtues and faults which characterize the transition stage between boyhood and manhood. The Cornish fishermen are drawn from life, they are racy of the soil, salt with the sea water, and they stand out from the pages in their jerseys and sea-boots all ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... minor as well as major delinquencies of those who breathe the same air with us; they could not fail to be interesting to us all, were we not aware that, like the novels which are said to be "founded on fact," their most rich and racy parts ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... of Will and John, named for the two uncles, would prove racy reading through many chapters. "The Twins" were the father's text for spicy stories galore many years before their death. From the first, they were "two young sinners." They both had active minds— overactive in devising deviltry. Mischievous as little fellows, never ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... of the pamphlet is given over to expounding the illogicalities and inconsistencies of the established spelling, and here G. W.'s style of writing, which is colloquial, racy and allusive, is effective enough. It is not so well suited, however, to orderly and clear exposition of his proposed amendment—unfortunately, since this is what is likely to be of most interest to us today (and numerous misprints increase the difficulties of ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... side, and well-broke setter or stanch hound recumbent at my feet. And one of these tales will I now venture to record, though it will sound but weak and feeble from my lips, if compared to the rich, racy, quaint and humorous thing it was, when flowing from the nature-gifted tongue of ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... heap too slight,' goes on Colonel Sterett, followin' a small libation, 'to strike a blow for the confed'racy, but my soul is shorely in the cause. I does try to j'ine, final, an' is only saved tharfrom, an' from what would, ondoubted, have been my certain death, by a reb gen'ral named Wheeler. He don't mean to do it; she's inadvertent so far as he's ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... "Bright," came from all parts of the House. The member for Birmingham is stout, bluff, and hearty, looking very much like a prosperous, well-dressed English yeoman. He is acknowledged to be the best declaimer in the House. Piquant, racy, and entertaining, he is always listened to with interest and pleasure; but somehow he labors under the prevalent suspicion of being insincere, and beyond a small circle of devoted admirers has no influence whatever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... national conditions, gave him an insight into the politics and society of the past not otherwise to have been obtained. Of still more value, perhaps, was the association with his young companions in the profession, and daily contact with the racy personalities which traditionally haunt all courts of law, and particularly Scotch courts of law: the first association kept him from the affectation and sentimentality which is the bane of the youthful romanticist; and the second ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Colored man in that section of the country. He was gifted in the use of good English, had an easy flow of language, was master of the most galling satire, quick in repartee, prompt to see a weak point and use it to the best advantage. He was a pungent and racy writer, and for a number of years contributed many able articles to the "Quincy Whig." He never spared slavery. In the pulpit, in the public prints, and in private, he fought manfully against the nefarious traffic in ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... days—perhaps it is well that they are not more common— when by some singular harmony of body and spirit, every little sound and sight strikes on the senses with a peculiar sharpness and distinctness of quality, has a keen and racy savour, and comes as delightfully home to the mind as cool well-water to thirsty lips. Everything seems in place, in some well-designed combination or symphony of the senses; and more than that—the sound, the sight, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... historian, in Guernsey a poetess, in Alderney a political economist, and in Sark a humorist: there were sketches of character scattered through the pages which might put our "fictionists" to the blush; the style was eloquent and racy, studded with gems of felicitous remark; and the moral spirit throughout was so superior that, said one, "the recording angel" (who is not supposed to take account of literature as such) "would assuredly set down the work as ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... surmise. Among gypsy women skill in begging implies the possession of every talent which they most esteem, such as artfulness, cool effrontery, and the power of moving pity or provoking generosity by pique or humor. A quaint and racy book might be written, should it only set forth the manner in which the experienced matrons give straight-tips or suggestions to the maidens as to the manner and lore of begging; and it is something worth hearing when several sit together and devise dodges, and tell anecdotes illustrating ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... Raschi lay Stretched 'twixt tall tapers lit at head and foot. She held in both hands leafy, flowerless plants, Some she had fastened in her twisted hair, Stuck others in her girdle, and from all Issued a racy odor, pungent-sweet, The living soul of Spring. Death's chamber seemed As though clear sunshine and a singing bird Therein had entered. From the precious herb She poured into a golden bowl the sap, Sparkling like wine; ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... at the newspaper table. He seized the Journal Amusant, and began to make merry remarks upon the illustrations. A little circle quickly gathered round him, and he was inexhaustible in racy stories and whimsicalities. ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... stupid," thought the chevalier. "I have nothing to contend with in such a rival; if the others are no more dangerous, it will be very easy for me to make Blue Beard adore me; but I must find the road to Devil's Cliff. It will be truly racy to be conducted thither by this bear." He spoke: "But, my brave hunter, alas! all glory is bought; I wished to see you, I have ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... accompaniment of fiddle, flute or clarionet, one of those stirring songs which, week after week, appeared about this time in the "Nation" from the pens of Thomas Davis, and the brilliant young men in O'Connell's movement known as the "Young Irelanders "—songs "racy of the soil," like the "Nation" itself, which stirred the hearts of the Irish race like the blast of a trumpet, songs which are still sung by Irish Nationalists ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... course, intended to be pitied, and pitied he was accordingly. And then he would turn the conversation, and begin telling Italian stories, after the Italian fashion, according to his auditory: the pathetic ones when Rose was present, the racy ones when she was absent; so that Rose had wept over the sorrows of Juliet and Desdemona, and over many another moving tale, long before they were ever enacted on an English stage, and the ribs of the Bideford worthies had shaken to ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... purpose of taking evidence on the subject; and the districts of London and Berkshire were allotted to him. His report, published in the following year, was a model of what a report should be. It was full of information, admirably classified and arranged, and was so racy,—by virtue of the facts brought to light, and the care taken to preserve the very words of the witnesses as they were spoken,—that the report may be read with interest by the most inveterate enemy ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... with the second course. The table was no sooner cleared of the cloth, and the racy wine with double rows of glasses again placed in array, than almonds, raisins, olives, oranges, Indian conserves, and biscuits deviled, covered the board! To it again they fell, with unabating vigour! I soon ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... a child, being rescued from a burning house, with his father right in the foreground giving thanks to God in the old-fashioned knee-breeches that were then worn. The other represented the Duke of Wellington in a similar frame on his famous charger Copenhagen and in the act of saying in his racy way, 'Up, Guards, and at 'em!' My great-uncle would often point to these two pictures and spell out the names for us as children, 'W-e-s-l-e-y' and 'W-e-l-l-e-s-l-e-y,' he would say. 'What different destinies the Almighty can spell into the ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... if I may use the expression, was Prince Ranjitsinhji's excellent "Jubilee Book of Cricket." He often accompanied the 1st XI for out-of-town matches, to act as scorer or reporter. His cricket reports in The Alleynian make racy reading. The following is taken from a picturesquely-written account of a victory over Brighton at Brighton ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... of Smollett in his first fiction, and in general, has marked dramatic flavor: his is a gift of forthright phrase, a plain, vernacular smack characterizes his diction. To go back to him now is to be surprised perhaps at the racy vigor of so faulty a writer and novelist. A page or so of Smollett, after a course in present-day popular fiction, reads very much like a piece of literature. In this respect, he seems full of flavor, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... danger. He had spent his life everywhere by bits, so he had the languages. I used to admire that in him, the way he could career along with a Frenchman, and exchange talk with a German waiter: high speed, and a kind of racy quality. ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... a scholarly work, notwithstanding its author's undoubted learning, but is a lively and gossipy account which has at least one virtue, that it entertains the reader. The Worthies, the most widely read of his works, is a racy account of the important men of England. Fuller traveled constantly for years, collecting information from out-of-the-way sources and gaining a minute knowledge of his own country. This, with his overflowing humor and numerous anecdotes and illustrations, makes lively ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... divided my time between sea sickness and Charles Reade's novel of "Never too Late to Mend," a cheery companion under such circumstances. The purposed rowdyism of the man's style shows a little too plainly, but his language is so racy and muscular, his characters so fairly and sharply drawn, that one must not be censorious. Towards evening I remembered that it was the Fourth, and so procured a specific for sea-sickness, with which Braisted and I, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... not endure the smart technicalities current; their multitude did not overpower her distaste; she called them "jargon"—"slang" was too coarse a word for her to apply to slang: she excluded many a good "racy idiom" along with the real offenders; and monosyllables in general ran some risk of' having to show their passports. If this was pedantry, it went no further; she was open, free, and youthful with her young pupils; ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Mr Trotter, greatly relieved. "I want a book of twenty pages. Write anything you like, only bring the pickles in on each page. You know the style. Twenty blood-curdling ballads, or Aesop's fables, or something the public's bound to read. Something racy, mind, and all ending in the pickle. It's a good thing, so you needn't be afraid of overdoing it. You shall have a bob a page, money down, or twenty-five bob for the lot if you let me have it this time to- morrow. Remember, nothing meek and mild. Lay it on thick. They're the best thing going, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... would deplore, as all honourable men in their hearts must deplore it. When you were at the University (let me congratulate you on your degree) you edited, or helped to edit, The Bull-dog. It was not a very brilliant nor a very witty, but it was an extremely "racy" periodical. It spoke of all men and dons by their nicknames. It was full of second-hand slang. It contained many personal anecdotes, to the detriment of many people. It printed garbled and spiteful versions of private conversations on private affairs. ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... Press throughout the whole Republic from Boston to New Orleans. Boston styles it a "vigorous volume;" Philadelphia, a "delightful treat;" New York, "interesting and instructive;" Albany admires the Author's "keen discriminating powers;" Detroit, "a lively and racy style;" The Christian Advocate styles it "a skinning operation" and then adds, it is a "retort courteous" to Uncle Tommyism; Rochester honours the author with the appellation of "the most chivalrous American that ever crossed the Atlantic." New Orleans winds up a long paragraph ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... to amuse children with, the language of thieves is peculiarly suitable, in so far that if ever the young people who devoured "Oliver Twist" had over among themselves any of the Dodger's and Charley Bates's racy expressions it was with a wholesome sense of its being highly improper; whereas one cannot imagine the little folk of to-day seeing any impropriety in an equally debased decoction of English—albeit somewhat more mildly drawn—when put ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... storm and sun, in fee simple for the race. My grain shall pass out into the world's mart, sent forth with love and prayer. Such a farmer is the incarnation of moral grandeur. Let men laugh, if they will, at his overalls and plough, his wide-brimmed hat, his simple manners, and his homely, racy speech. His feet are by the furrow, but his heart is in heaven, and his treasure is there also. Says the author of Nine Acres on the Hillside, "The agriculturist walks side ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... White; by his "Story of My Heart" he stands by himself, a little apart from the poets, and by "Amaryllis at the Fair" he stands among the half-dozen country writers of the century whose work is racy of the English soil and of rural English human nature. We will name three of these writers, Barnes, Cobbett, Waugh, and our attentive readers can ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... one of the first books I remember reading as a child. Some of the items are thoughtfully written, like how to write checks. Many others are just rumors or careless opinions. Some are "racy" ads. Many articles are lead-ins to the advertisements. Whatever their truth, they are interesting reading, calculated to draw the attention of ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... Puss, with a cautious pat To feel the pulse of the quivering Bat, That had not, under her tender paw, A limb to move, nor a breath to draw! Then she called her kit for a mother's gift, And stilled its mew with the racy lift. ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... day, rich in light and shade, and there was only a breath abroad of the racy freshness that meant subsequent decay. The leaves were turning red and orange, but had not begun to fall; the sky was deeply blue; outlines were sharp and precise. They were both in a mood this morning ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... disapprovingly in a corner of the car. The girl was of a type as yet not common in Western Canada, reserved, quietly imperious, and annoyingly free from any manifestation of enthusiasm. She had also listened languidly to their most racy stories with a somewhat tired ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... Jim, whose guest I was. The fact that we were without butter, and that "sweetness" (molasses) was low, was scarcely even noticed. I remember as if it were yesterday the stimulating tang of the frosty air and the racy problem of the open sea yet to be covered. The bag of birds which we had captured when we had driven in for shelter from the storm made our dry-diet supper sweeter than any Delmonico ten-course dinner, because we had wrested it ourselves from the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... to converse with her through an ear trumpet, we left her to do most of the talking. She gave us many amusing experiences of her travels in America, and her comments on the London Convention were rich and racy. She was not an attractive woman in either manner or appearance, though considered great and good ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... chroniclers describe the preparations of William on his landing, with a graphic vigour, which would be wholly lost by transfusing their racy Norman couplets and terse Latin prose into the current style of modern history. It is best to follow them closely, though at the expense of much quaintness and occasional uncouthness of expression. They tell us how Duke William's own ship was the first of ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... upon the absurd strength of his never touching it himself. On the contrary, we love to see a wag taste his own joke to his party; to watch a quirk, or a merry conceit, flickering upon the lips some seconds before the tongue is delivered of it. If it be good, fresh, and racy—begotten of the occasion; if he that utters it never thought it before, he is naturally the first to be tickled with it; and any suppression of such complacence we hold to be churlish and insulting. What does it seem to imply, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb |
