"Sportive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drowsy summer in the flowering limes Had laid her down at ease, Lulled by soft, sportive winds, whose tinkling chimes Summoned the wandering bees To feast, and dance, and hold high carnival Within that vast ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... the long night, With fleet foot glancing white, Shall I go dancing in my revelry, My neck cast back, and bare Unto the dewy air, Like sportive faun in the green ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... with a new and peculiar fervour of eloquence, such as had never been heard among us before, how manifold, how multiform have been this man's generous vindications of our great Bard! Now broad in humour; now sportive and playful; now sarcastic, scornful, and searching; now calmly philosophic in criticism; now thoughtful and solemn, large of reverent discourse, 'looking before and after,' with all the sweetest by-plays of humanity, with every reconciling softness of charity—such, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... the nineteenth century include the old Christmas game of Forfeits, for every breach of the rules of which the players have to deposit some little article as a forfeit, to be redeemed by some sportive penalty, imposed by the "Crier of the Forfeits" (usually a bonnie lassie). The "crying of the forfeits" and paying of the penalties creates much merriment, particularly when a bashful youth is sentenced to "kiss through the fire-tongs" ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... only Pennsylvania that served as the theater of his sportive eccentricities. The police reported his appearance in other states; in Kentucky near Frankfort; in Ohio near Columbus; in Tennessee near Nashville; in Missouri near Jefferson; and finally in Illinois ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... grow together. And ever since we came here, we know how she has worked away for her old cinder and her small Rosebud, don't we?" she added, playfully squeezing the child's cheeks up into a more budding look, hiding deeper and more overcoming feelings by the sportive action. And as her sister came back, she looked up and shook her ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ladies bend the knee. Haste away to Scotia's Land, With kilt and Highland plaid; And join the sportive, reeling band, With ilka bonny lad.— For night and day,—we'll trip away, With cheerful dance, and glee; Come o'er the spray,—without delay, Each ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... absolute torrent, with mud-thickened water, which cascades round one's ankles in a sportive way, and round one's knees in the hollows in the path. On we go, the path underneath the water seems a pretty equal mixture of rock and mud, but they are not evenly distributed. Plantations full of weeds show up on either side of us, and we are evidently ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... opened, and Prince Augustus William entered; his countenance was gay and careless, he had come to see the queen-mother, and had been directed to this saloon. Already sportive and jesting words were on his lips, when he perceived this strange scene; Laura on her knees, pale and trembling, before the proud queen, who left her disdainfully in her humble position. It was a sight that the proud lover could not endure. The hot blood of ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... me. For of your domestic concerns you have members of your family both to write and to act as messengers. Besides, in my personal affairs there is really nothing new. There are two other kinds of letters which give me great pleasure: the familiar and sportive, and the grave and serious. Which of these two I ought least to employ I do not understand. Am I to jest with you by letter? Upon my word, I don't think the man a good citizen who could laugh in times like these. Shall I write in a more serious style? What could be written ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... muse. Her question recurred to her; but it was hardly likely, she felt, that her little companion could enlighten her. Nora was a bright, lively, spirited child, with black eyes and waves of beautiful black hair; neither at rest; sportive energy and enjoyment in every motion. Daisy ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... morsel—flesh obscene of dog, Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race, They pick their fuel out of every hedge, Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unqueuched The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin, The vellum ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... was in the habit of making many of his tenets minister to his amusement, when in his more sportive and genial moods. Not to exhaust his characteristics too early in the story, it need only be observed here that he held body and soul distinct, and so far antagonistic that one or the other must be master; furthermore, that the soul's supremacy ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... mamma," Edward answered for her, in sportive tone; "she has made such fair promises of submission, obedience, and all that, that she'll hardly dare refuse to do anything ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... had carv'd The ocean girding in the land; the land; And heaven o'ershadowing: here cerulean gods Sport in the waves, grim Triton with his shell; Proteus shape-changing; and AEgeon huge,— His mighty arms upon the large broad backs Of whales hard pressing: Doris and her nymphs: Some sportive swimming; on a rocky seat Some their green tresses drying; others borne By fish swift-gliding: nor the same all seem'd, Yet sister-like a close resembling look Each face pervaded. Earth her natives bore, Mankind;—and woods, and cities, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... grew on the denuded parts were whitish, and never resumed their natural hue. I often saw Charley long after the death of his master, and he looked as if Nature, in one of her sportive moods, had created him half parrot, half gosling—so strangely did his whitish back and tail contrast with his scarlet poll and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... way to Witherby. The telegram despatched, prepaid with the porterage by Viviette, Austin felt that he had done his duty by his brother, and deserved some consideration on his own account. And here it was that the summer began its game with their hearts. On such sportive occasions it is not so much what is said that matters. A conversation that might be entirely conventional between comparative strangers in a fog may become the most romantic interchange of sentiment imaginable between intimates in the sunshine. There are tones, there ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... see, that wave was started when you stepped into the river for your little sportive paddle. It kept growing bigger all the time as it rolled down the stream, till it nigh swamped the old fisherman. I'm almost afraid to hear what calamity may have happened to some of the lower ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... outlined in cumulus masses against unvarying azure, are as unrestrained and independent of prescription as Monticelli's figures. Lancret, Pater, Nattier, and Van Loo—the very names suggest not merely freedom but a sportive and abandoned license. But in what a narrow round they move! How their imaginativeness is limited by their artificiality! What a talent, what a genius they have for artificiality. It is the era ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... about it in a mute, astonished dance. The wood crackled, and the leaves of the trees rustled softly. Alarmed by the waves of the heated atmosphere, the merry, vivacious tongues of fire, yellow and red, in sportive embrace, soared aloft, sowing sparks. The burning leaves flew, and the stars in the sky smiled to the sparks, luring them up ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... if they desire to war, Why should we hinder such a sportive game? They own those isles, and why should we debar Them pastimes, for "they know just what ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... the sharpest eye in the country had never seen before. Curiosity led them towards the turret, when they were charmed by the most exquisite sounds ever emitted by a fiddle-string, which, joined to the sportive mirth and glee accompanying it, reconciled them in a great measure to the scene, although they knew well enough the inhabitants of the nook were fairies. Nay, overpowered by the enchanting jigs played by ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Jo, you hear?" cried Belvedere. "The lads are for ending of 'em sportive fashion—especially the Don; he must die slow and quaint for sake 'o the good lads as do hang a-rotting on his cursed gibbets e'en now—quaint and slow; the lads think ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the sportive prelude of more serious trouble. Nunquam imprudentibus imber incidit: as the servant perhaps reflected, who, on Monday, January 29th, was conveying the dinner of his master's family from the Hotel kitchen ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... for me that it is in your case, as I have often thought," she said in sportive tone, "for it seems to hide all my imperfections and show you virtues ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... made great strides of late, and the other frontier boundary states have naturally followed suit. Roads improvement in Germany has gone on at a wonderful rate of late, due, it is said, to the interest of the German emperor in the automobile industry, both from a sportive and a ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the other hand, Cowper did not write John Gilpin which is certainly his masterpiece, in the mood of a man using wit as a decoy. He wrote it because it irresistibly demanded to be written. "I wonder," he once wrote to Newton, "that a sportive thought should ever knock at the door of my intellects, and still more that it should gain admittance. It is as if harlequin should intrude himself into the gloomy chamber where a corpse is deposited in state." Harlequin, luckily for us, took hold of his ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... thought all this was but a sportive play (not dreaming that Ganymede was his very Rosalind), yet the opportunity it gave him of saying all the fond things he had in his heart pleased his fancy almost as well as it did Ganymede's, who enjoyed the secret jest in knowing these fine love-speeches were all addressed ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to do. But it was over the maiden that our Dorothea pondered, until by and by the small shade took features and a place in her leisure time: a very companionable shade, though tantalising; and innocent, though given to mischievously sportive hints. Dorothea sometimes wondered what her own fate would have been, with this naughtiness in her young ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... should have continued in this individual bird down to within so short a period of the end; that it should have been not only strong enough to find its food, but to rush and wheel about for long intervals in purely sportive exercises, when the brief twilight of decline and final extinction were so near! It becomes credible—we can even believe that most of the individuals that cease to exist only when the vital fire has burnt itself out, fall ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... decks the nymph who wears her potent spell With sparkling eye, and gaily dimpled cheek That sportive ease and conscious pow'r bespeak, Nor dreads that time ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... quiet married life. The viscount was too young to be not merely a lover and tender husband, but also a sober counsellor and cautious instructor in the difficult after-day of life; and Josephine was too innocent, too artless, too sportive and genial, to avoid all those things that might give to the watchful and hostile family of her husband an opportunity for ill-natured suspicions, which were whispered in the viscount's ear as cruel certainties. ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... of life Looks cheerful, when one carries in one's heart The unalienable treasure. 'Tis a game, Which, having once reviewed, I turn more joyous Back to my deeper and appropriate bliss. [Breaking off, and in a sportive tone. In this short time that I've been present here. What new unheard-of things have I not seen; And yet they all must give place to the wond Which this ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the movement of the centre itself appeared independent and always took a southerly direction. Before each outburst of agitation there was much hissing and a throbbing internal roaring, as of imprisoned gases. Now it seemed furious, demoniacal, as if no power on earth could bind it, then playful and sportive, then for a second languid, but only because it was accumulating fresh force. On our arrival eleven fire fountains were playing joyously round the lakes, and sometimes the six of the nearer lake ran together in the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... row of lights along the sides of the jetty, the rapid motion landward of the wavetips producing upon his eye an apparent progress of the pier out to sea. This pier-head was a spot which Christopher enjoyed visiting on such moaning and sighing nights as the present, when the sportive and variegated throng that haunted the pier on autumn days was no longer there, and he seemed alone with weather and ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... the pedestal of a leaden effigy of Julius Caesar and plucked his dressing-gown about him with fumbling bewildered hands. Was the whole British Army pouring into his peaceful park? What had he done to bring down on his head the sportive mockery of heaven, and at ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it must be remembered, to harmonize these touches of playful fancy with what the poet is obliged to recognize as facts in nature. A tyro in the art is likely to transcend nature and alter a little things as he finds them, when he wishes to indulge in sportive recreation. Something well out of the common course must be laid hold on to excite that pleasant feeling of surprise which lies at the foundation of wit, if not of humor. Every one knows how much easier it is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to pretend," said the girl, as with a half-serious, half-sportive imperiousness she laid her hand on Mr. Morgan's arm. "And now it is thirty years ago, and we are walking together." He involuntarily obeyed the slight pressure, and they walked slowly away, leaving the other two, after an embarrassed ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... plentiful near that spot, and came close several times, grinding their teeth at us, especially when we were slaughtering the fish on the bank. We kept watch during the entire night, as on that occasion they were truly vicious. Our dogs, for a change, became quite sportive. One of them, named Negrino, got furious with the ariranhas, and, driven mad by their unmusical noises, actually jumped into the stream to go to their attack. In a moment he had quantities of ariranhas upon him, and was bitten savagely, one ear ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to-night, in the bosom of your family, as it were, your presence lay so like a wet blanket upon us all that, 'pon my soul, I nearly cracked my voice trying to keep those girls from noticing it! Seriously, I am delighted, of course, that you should feel so sportive, and it is high time indeed that the neighbourhood should see something of you, but I fear you are reckoning beyond your strength. Anyhow, command me. I shall be anxious to help you all I can in this novel departure. What are ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... water teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon, or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes myriads of happy beings crowd upon my {18} view. 'The insect youth are on the wing.' Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy, and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties.... The whole winged insect tribe, it is probable, are equally intent upon their ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... with sunshine and laughter in their beneficent faces; softening the austerity of thoughts whose awful shadows dim and darken the brain,—loosening the gripe of Misery as it tugs at the heart-strings! Let us court the society of these gamesome, and genial, and sportive, and sparkling beings,—whom Genius has left to us as a priceless bequest; push them not from the daily walks of the world's life: let them scatter some humanities in the sullen marts of business; let them glide in through ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Cypripedium insigne received at St. Albans, and "established," Mr. Sander noted one presently of which the flower-stalk was yellow instead of brown, as is usual. Sharp eyes are a valuable item of the orchid-grower's stock-in-trade, for the smallest peculiarity among such "sportive" objects should not be neglected. Carefully he put the yellow stalk aside—the only one among thousands, one might say myriads, since C. insigne is one of our oldest and commonest orchids, and it never showed this phenomenon ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... song and sportive speech, And mirthful tales of earlier years, Though deep within the soul of each Lay thoughts too ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... on thus, with his Gascon inspirations: and these sportive notions, struck off at a heat, these careless intuitions, these fine new practical axioms of scientific politics, appear to be every whit as good as if they had been sifted through the scientific tables of the Novum Organum. They are, in fact, the identical truth which the last vintage of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... undeveloped in mind and heart, the easily duped agent of a cruel trick, appeals to us by her slow, incredulous, but eager response to goodness and aspiration, the tremulous opening of her soul to love. But Pippa, with her observant love of nature, her gay, sportive, winsome fancies, her imaginative sympathy with the lives of others, her knowledge of good and evil, her poise, her bright steadiness of soul, carries us into a different and much more highly evolved world of thought and feeling. So we might ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... which is anticipated. The "grotesque" is a vehicle for grim and often terrible ideas, lightly veiled by a cloak of humorous exaggeration; a sort of Viking horse-play—it is, in fact, a language which expresses the mixed feelings of sportive contempt and real fear in about equal proportions. When these feelings are not behind the expression, it becomes a language which is in itself ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... the nymphs Thither assembled, thither every swain; And o'er the dimpled stream a thousand flowers, Pale lilies, roses, violets and pinks, Mix'd with the greens of bouret, mint, and thyme, And trefoil, sprinkled with their sportive arms, Such custom holds along th' irriguous vales, From Wreken's brow to ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... the real concerning them, was too exclusively confined to those tragic and terrible traits of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress. Her imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than sunny, more powerful than sportive, found in such traits material whence it wrought creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, like Catherine. Having formed these beings, she did not know what she had done. If the auditor of her work, when read in manuscript, ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... beautiful morning on the foam-crest waves as they roll in sportive emulation, with a cloudless sky coming down on every side to kiss the horizon, shutting out human vision of all else beyond, one could not fail to be impressed with the greatness, the omnipotence of the Creator. This being but a speck ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... instant the cause of my alarm wheeled past me at full gallop. It was one of the young fillies which pastured loose about the park, whose frolics had thus all but maddened me with terror. I scrambled to my feet, and rushed on with weak but rapid steps, my sportive companion still galloping round and round me with many a frisk and fling, until, at length, more dead than alive, I reached the avenue-gate and crossed the stile, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... determine if I need abbreviate this blissful moment, I saw the enraged animal disappearing in the side door of the barn; and it was a nice, comfortable Durham cow,—that somewhat rare but possible thing, a sportive cow! ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... always judging one another before they are finished. A raw boy, with only the undeveloped elements of manhood in him, is denounced as a dunce. A light-hearted, sportive girl, with an incontinent overflow of spirits, is condemned as a hoiden. Neither boy nor girl is half made. There is only the frame-work of the man and woman up, and it does not appear what they are to become. A young man is wild, and judged accordingly. It is not remembered that ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... long-cherished hopes, and the lost was found. Here all doubt and danger were buried in the vortex of oblivion; sectional differences no longer disunited their opinions; like the freed bird from the cage, sportive claps its rustling wings, wheels about to heaven in a joyful strain, and raises its notes to the upper sky. Ambulinia insisted upon Elfonzo to be seated, and give her a history of his unnecessary absence; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the singularity of her existence, from the essentially French tone of her character, from the grandeur of an epoch during which no one passed unnoticed, that the species of popularity half-indulgent, half-sportive, which attached to her name must be attributed? To all these doubtless, but likewise to another cause more decisive still. Mademoiselle does not take her place only in the sufficiently extensive catalogue of princely eccentricities; she holds a creditable position upon the list of French writers. ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... when Martin finally and completely realized that the even course of his life had been rudely and permanently changed, that he had been plucked out of his humdrum niche and cast willy-nilly into this violent drama by sportive circumstance. The tumultuous incidents of the previous night arrayed themselves in his mind with something of their ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... vineyards and the garden-plats Were happy-hearted youths and merry girls Toiling and singing. Grandsires too were there, Sitting contented under their own vines And fig-trees, while about them merrily played Their children's children like the sportive lambs That frolicked on the foot-hills. Low of kine, Full-uddered, homeward-wending from the meads, Fell on the ear as soft as Hulder's loor Tuned on the Norse-land mountains. Like a nest Hid in a hawthorn-hedge a cottage stood Embowered with vines beneath ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... that she were here, Where the free waters leap, Shouting in sportive joyousness Adown the rocky steep: Where zephyrs crisp and cool The fountains as they play, With health upon their wings of light, And gladness on their way. Oh, would that she were here, With these balm-breathing trees, ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... "Like sportive deer, they cours'd about, And shouted as they ran, Turning to mirth all things of earth, As ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... Princess Summer in robes of green. And the King of day smiled down upon her And wooed her, and won her, and made her queen. Fruit of their union and true love's pledges, Beautiful roses bloomed day by day, And rambled in gardens and hid in hedges Like royal children in sportive play. ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the inn seemed likely to take a livelier turn. Even the whistling sleet appeared to become less fierce and terrible. True, the stalwart dalesman on the door bench yawned and slept as before; but even Ralph's firm lower lip began to relax, and he was never a gay and sportive elf. The rest of the company charged their pipes afresh and called on the hostess for more ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... of state, The pride of wealth, the splendour of the great, Stripp'd of their mask, their cares and troubles known, Are visions far less happy than thy own: Go on! and, while the sons of care complain, Be wisely gay and innocently vain; While serious souls are by their fears undone, Blow sportive bladders in the beamy sun, And call them worlds! and bid the greatest show More radiant colours in their worlds below: Then, as they break, the slaves of care reprove, And tell them, Such are ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... may contrast Dunbar's pious "Ballat of Our Lady" with his "Kynd Kittok," in which God has his eye on the soul of an intemperate ale-wife who has crept into Paradise. "God lukit, and saw her lattin in, and leugh His heart sair." Examples of this kind of sportive irreverence are common enough; their root is in human nature: and they could not be absent in the mythology of savage or of ancient peoples. To Zeus the myths of this kind would come to be attached ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... ne'er did Grecian chisel trace A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace, Of finer form or lovelier face! What though the sun, with ardent frown, Had slightly tinged her cheek with brown,— The sportive toil, which, short and light Had dyed her glowing hue so bright, Served too in hastier swell to show Short glimpses of a breast of snow: What though no rule of courtly grace To measured mood had trained her pace,— A foot more light, a step ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... say. Alas! that ruthless science in these days, To its stern crucible hath brought at last, The cherished shapes that all so fondly gaze Upon us from the dim poetic past! Else might these moonlit prairies show at dawn, The dew-swept circle of the elfin dance— These woodlands teem with sportive fay and faun— These grottoes glimmer with sweet Echo's glance. Perchance a future Homer might have wrought From out the scattered wreck of ages fled, Some long lost Troy, where mighty heroes fought, And made the earth re-echo ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... in the muddy street; then springing up again like a flash, he resumed his place on the gate, and looked as innocent as a lamb. But the man picked himself up slowly, and turning round, poured a torrent of angry words on the sportive youth. ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... her various suitors, in the first scene with Nerissa, what infinite power, wit, and vivacity! She half checks herself as she is about to give the reins to her sportive humor: "In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker."—But if it carries her away, if is so perfectly good-natured, so temperately bright, so lady-like, it is ever without offence; and so far, most unlike ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of the house of a friend of mine, a few inches above the lock, is a little chalk-mark which some sportive boy in passing has probably scratched on the pillar. The door-steps, the lock, handle, and so forth, are kept decently enough; but this chalk-mark, I suppose some three inches out of the housemaid's beat, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... home, lamenting the social anarchy of America, and retailing their own indecent conduct as the ordinary customs of the country.... The pranks which, in a backwoods American, would be stigmatized as shocking obscenity, become, when perpetrated by a rich Englishman, charming evidence of sportive humour," &c. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... air? Where makest thou thy dwelling-place? Afar, O'er inland pastures, from the herbless rock, Amid the weltering ocean, thou dost hold, At early sunrise, thy unguided way,— The visitants of Nature's varied realms,— The habitant of Ocean, Earth, and Air,— Sailing with sportive breast, mid wind and wave, And, when the sober evening draws around Her curtains, clasp'd together by her Star, Returning to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... and worked at it, last autumn and winter, till I had a bad illness. I am now at work on it again; and go full sail, like my hero. There are six Cantos done, roughly, besides what you saw. I have struck out most of the absurdest couplets, and given the whole a higher though still sportive tone. It is becoming a kind of Odyssey, with a laughing and Christian Achilles for hero. One may manage to wrap, in that chivalrous brocade, many things belonging to our Time, and capable of interesting it. The thing is not bad; but will require great labor. Only ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... still air was stirred by the sportive whippoorwill's call with which the young engineer of that particular train always announced with the locomotive's whistle his approach to Chester, and later there was a sound of escaping steam and the slow clanging of a bell ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... sad memory woos back time, And paints the scenes when youth was in its prime; The craggy hill, where rocks, with wild flow'rs crown'd, Burst from the hazle copse or verdant ground; Where sportive nature every form assumes, And, gaily lavish, wastes a thousand blooms; Where oft we heard the echoing hills repeat Our untaught strains and rural ditties sweet, Till purpling clouds proclaimed the closing day, While distant ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... learning to be looked at when dressed, "avec un front impassible," it reminded me of —— and her mother. What a heroine she would be for Sand! She has the same fearless softness with Juliet, and a sportive naivete a mixture of bird and kitten, unknown to ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... first return, was distinguished by a most gracious clemency, evinced not so much, indeed, by any excessive remuneration of services, as by the politic oblivion of injuries. If he ever alluded to these, it was in a sportive way, implying that there was no rancor or ill-will at heart. "Who would have thought," he exclaimed one day to a courtier near him, "that you could so easily abandon your old master, for one so young and inexperienced?" "Who would have thought," ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... consulted a wise man, whose advice was that when she grew up she should be wary of any man whom she liked and mistrusted in one breath. Meaning to do her a service, Tommy communicated this to her; and then, what do you think? Grizel would have no more dealings with him! By and by the gods, in a sportive mood, sent him to labour on a farm, whence, as we have seen, he found a way to London, and while he was growing into a man Grizel became a woman. At the time of the doctor's death she was nineteen, tall and graceful, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... the child took every day a stronger hold of the youth. Frederick was not always in that sportive humour in which we have seen him repeatedly. At times he would wander about silent and solitary, wrapped in his musical meditations. He would sit up late, busy with his beloved music, and often, after lying down, rise from his bed in the middle ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... over the helpless, and extends an especial care to those who are not capable of caring for themselves. So used, it breathes the same feeling as "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"—or the more sportive adage, that "the fairies take care of children and tipsy folk." The persuasion itself, in addition to the general religious feeling of mankind, and the scarcely less general love of the marvelous, may be accounted for from our tendency to exaggerate all effects ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... annul all apologies he coined as coming from us, and to hold him up to public commiseration as a reptile endowed with no more intellect, no more cultivation, no more Christian principle than animates and adorns the sportive jackass-rabbit of the Sierras. We ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... watched him while in sportive mood I read "The Twa Dogs" story, And half believed ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... must exist still. Again, in your slim-formed girl of eight years, you look in vain for the sturdy elf of five. Gone? No; that cannot be—'a thing of beauty is a joy for ever.' Close your eyes: you have her there! A breeze-like, sportive, buoyant thing; a thing of breathing, laughing, unmistakable life; she is mirrored on your retina as plainly as ever was dancing sunbeam on a brook. The very trick of her lip—of her eye; the mischief-smile, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... of the Black Forest, stirred by the warm night-air, became almost audible; or when, in the long afternoons, they wandered in the woods apart from the others—from Mrs. Vivian and the amiable object of her more avowed solicitude, the object of the sportive adoration of the irrepressible, the ever-present Lovelock. They were constantly having parties in the woods at this time—driving over the hills to points of interest which Bernard had looked out in the guide-book. Bernard, in such matters, was extremely ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Lippo, by your leave! You need not clap your torches to my face. Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk! What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds, And here you catch me at an alley's end Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar? The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up, Do—harry out, if you must show your zeal, Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole, And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, 10 , , that's crept to keep him company! Aha, you know your betters! ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... become the servant. Look around you, Senor Penitentiary, and you will see the admirable aggregation of truths which has taken the place of fable. The sky is not a vault; the stars are not little lamps; the moon is not a sportive huntress, but an opaque mass of stone; the sun is not a gayly adorned and vagabond charioteer but a fixed fire; Scylla and Charybdis are not nymphs but sunken rocks; the sirens are seals; and in the order of personages, Mercury is Manzanedo; Mars is a clean-shaven old ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... arose the quaint fancies of the palaces of Blois and Chambord, and the playfulness of many an old Flemish house-front. Such a Renaissance would not have come among these venial sins of naivete, this sportive affluence of invention, to overturn ruthlessly and annihilate. Its mission would inevitably have been, not to destroy, but to fulfil,—to invest these strange results of human frailty and human power with that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... the Mantuan lyre I sing of Nature's charms, and touch well pleased A stricter note: now haply must my song Unbend her serious measure, and reveal In lighter strains, how Folly's awkward arts [Endnote Y] Excite impetuous Laughter's gay rebuke; The sportive province of ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... party has a thought of the other's proximity or approach. They cannot, with the ridge between. Still is there that, which should make them suspicious of something. Above each band are buzzards—a large flock. They flout the air in sportive flight, their instinct admonishing them that the two parties are hostile, and likely to spill ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... instantaneously what he at first mistook for the same figure creeping on all-fours, but what he soon perceived to be an enormous black dog with a rough coat like a bear's, which at first sniffed about, and then started towards him in what seemed to be a sportive amble, bouncing this way and that, but as it drew near it displayed a pair of fearful eyes that glowed like live coals, and emitted from the monstrous expanse of ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... Rabelais, without Voltaire, without Heine, you would find, methinks, even the joys of your Happy Islands lacking in zest; and, unless Plato came by your way, none of the ancients could meet you in the lists of sportive dialogue. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... gentleman's hat turned over to the wind, and that active body (which never neglects any sportive opportunity) got into the crown, with the speed of an upstart, and made off with it along the stones. A costly hat it was, and comely with rich braid and satin loops, becoming also to a well-shaped ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... for its mother's breast, so the most skeptical of scientists trusts it when he declares that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, and sets it down for a certainty that this will always be so—that he is not being played with by some sportive demon, who will today cause H20 to behave like ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... water was planned for the morning, and Edward and Fanny were wakened from their slumbers by the tones of the bugle; a soft Irish melody being breathed by Spillan, followed by a more sportive one from the other minstrel of the ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... spring and playtime of the year, That calls th' unwonted villager abroad, With all her little ones, a sportive train, To gather king-cups in the yellow mead, And prink their heads with ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... with condign punishment, and resulted in the closing of the place for good. After it had stood unoccupied for some time Dr. Johnson passed it in the company of Beauclerk, Langton, and Lady Sydney Beauclerk, and made a sportive suggestion that he and Beauclerk and Langton should take it. "We amused ourselves," he said, "with scheming how we should all do our parts. Lady Sydney grew angry and said, 'An old man should not ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Nature's genuine form, Or Fashion's light factitious traits to trace, The scene confess'd;—with glowing pathos warm, Or gaily sportive in familiar grace. ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... Beguiles the rustic's closing day, When drawn the evening fire about, Sit aged crone and thoughtless lout; Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces. Backward coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe. The house wife's, spindle whirling round, Or thread, or straw, that on the ground Its shadow throws, by urchin sly, Held out ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... gay, a. merry, sportive, frolicsome, lively, exhilarating, vivacious, jolly, blithe, airy, boon, convivial, jovial, joyous; brilliant, dashing, gallant, showy; garish, gaudy, flashing, tawdry; (Colloq.) ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... cold, unnatural, and altogether detestable. Through what inconsistency or perversity of taste is it then, that I am enchanted with the fantastic elegance, and the picturesque gaiety of the Pamfili gardens; where sportive art revels and runs wild amid the luxuriance of nature? Or is it, as I would rather believe, because these long arcades of verdure, these close walls of laurel, pervious to the air, but impervious to the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... of nature speaks at first in vague emotions, scarcely distinguishable from mere animal buoyancy. The boy, hooting in mimicry of the owls, receives in his heart the voice of mountain torrents and the solemn imagery of rocks, and woods, and stars. The sportive girl is unconsciously moulded into stateliness and grace by the floating clouds, the bending willow, and even by silent sympathy with the motions of the storm. Nobody has ever shown, with such exquisite power as Wordsworth, how ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... earlier years (the most unpardonable to the Venetian councillors was his free-thinking, not his dissoluteness, or quarrelsomeness, or rather sportive knavery) were by degrees passing into oblivion, and so Casanova had a certain amount of confidence that he would receive a hearing. The history of his marvellous escape from The Leads of Venice, which he had recounted on innumerable occasions at the courts ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... concealed stones and daggers under baskets of fruit, massacred, at a solemn festival, three thousand of their blue adversaries. [44] From this capital, the pestilence was diffused into the provinces and cities of the East, and the sportive distinction of two colors produced two strong and irreconcilable factions, which shook the foundations of a feeble government. [45] The popular dissensions, founded on the most serious interest, or holy pretence, have scarcely equalled the obstinacy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... in accents low, The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glittering female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display: On hasty wings thy youth is flown; ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... long years have past, Long years with dark calamity o'ercast, Well I remember, and with grateful pride, How to my heart thy friendly verse supplied The glow of exultation; for thy praise Shed gracious honour on my sportive lays. When 'twas my aim to clear from thorns of strife The budding roses of domestic life, And teach young nymphs, in irritation's hour, To triumph over spleen's insidious power. O that, while glowing with celestial hope, ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... such misfortune! Bitter memories Of days long past lie like a weight of lead Upon my anxious soul; I cannot raise Mine eyes for heaviness of heart. And, more, The boy of those far days is grown a man, No longer, like a wanton, sportive child, Gambols amid bright flow'rs, but reaches out For ripened fruit, for what is real and sure. Babes I have got, but have no place where they May lay their heads; my task it is to make An heritage for these. Shall Jason's stock Be but a withered weed beside ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... etiquette had prevented the company from exchanging any remarks. Whatever one person might desire to say to another he was forced to entrust to the mute language of the eyes, and a sportive impulse induced Emperor Rudolph to maintain the spell which held apart those who were most strongly attracted ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lightly in the water as if to kiss their reflected images; and, rising suddenly in long rapid flights, mount in circles up high above the tranquil world into the azure sky, till small white specks alone are visible in the distance. Up, up they rise on sportive wing, till the straining eye can no longer distinguish them, and they are gone! Ducks, too, whir past in rapid flight, steering wide of the boats, and again bending in long graceful curves into their course. The sweet, plaintive cry of the whip-poor-will rings along the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... were a long-faced lot. They didn't know how to play at all. They had been brought up in stern repression of frivolities as haunters—no matter how sportive they may have been in life—and in turn they cowed mortals into a servile submission. No doubt they thought of men and women as mere youngsters that must be taught their place, since any living person, however senile, would be thought juvenile ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... destruction in these animals during life is great, while after death they either furnish valuable skins or wholesome food. Moreover, here the wolf awakes the reverberating echoes of the forest with its dismal howl; the raccoon, opossum, and squirrel pass their lives in sportive gambols; the wild and the ocellated turkeys strut about, pompous in manner, as if conscious of their handsome plumage, while the timid deer and shaggy-coated bison roam over prairies or through woodland glades, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... of the sportive shears, Fair nature mis-adorning, there were found: Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers, With sprouting urns and budding statues crowned; And horizontal dials on the ground, In living box by cunning ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers |
