"Briskness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stimulated his nerve centres, for he had abandoned the languid drawl with which, in happier moments, he was wont to comment on life's happenings, and was dealing with the situation with a staccato briskness. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... an alert little woman with a provincial accent and the briskness of a cock-sparrow, whose prettiness, combined with ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... airs of cheerful briskness that deceived the public. No one could have thought that Amos was fearing his undoubtedly crazed clerk might become uncontrollable at any moment, or that the clerk was mentally parting from Amos forever in a scene of tense dramatic value in which his few dignified but scathing words ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... he said it worse on the seventh repetition than on the first. After an evening, when Gillian had gone to a musical party with Aunt Ada, and Fergus did his lessons under Aunt Jane's superintendence, he utterly cast off his sister's aid. There was something in Miss Mohun's briskness that he found inspiring, and she put in apt words or illustrations, instead of only rousing herself from a book to listen, prompt, and sigh. He found that he did his tasks more thoroughly in half the time, and rose in his class; and busy as his aunt ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Desert I rode through a village which lies near to the city on the eastern side, there approached me with busy face and earnest gestures a personage in the Turkish dress. His long flowing beard gave him rather a majestic look, but his briskness of manner, and his visible anxiety to accost me, seemed strange in an Oriental. The man in fact was French, or of French origin, and his object was to warn me of the plague, and prevent me from ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... then, to inquire what the Speaking Oak had said. But the briskness of her tone encouraged the young man; and, besides, he had never in his life felt so vigorous and mighty as since taking this old woman on his back. Instead of being exhausted, he gathered strength as he went on; and, ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seemed to feel no manner of uneasiness from the motion in dancing; on the contrary, being only apprehensive of the presence of her husband, which would have destroyed all her happiness, she danced with uncommon briskness, lest her ill stars should bring him back before she had fully satisfied herself with it. In the midst, therefore, of her capering in this indiscreet manner, her cushion came loose, without her perceiving it, and fell to the ground in the very middle ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and elm trees which afford rest to swallows. That wide extent of spring leeks with verdure covers the ground; And o'er ten li the paddy blossom fragrance doth abound. In days of plenty there's a lack of dearth and of distress, And what need then is there to plough and weave with such briskness? ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... last. Then, with a sudden briskness: "Let the Citizen La Boulaye not go forth until I return," he bade the gaoler; and to Caron he said: "You will have the goodness to await ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... or two between him and his wife, convinced him that all was as right as this speech proclaimed; and its happy effect on his spirits was immediate. His air and voice recovered their usual briskness: he shook her heartily and gratefully by the hand, and entered on the subject in a manner to prove, that he now only wanted time and persuasion to think the engagement no very bad thing. His companions suggested only what could palliate ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... their Beauty. The dressing Part of our Sex, whose Minds are the same with the sillyer Part of the other, are exactly in the like uneasy Condition to be regarded for a well-tied Cravat, an Hat cocked with an unusual Briskness, a very well-chosen Coat, or other Instances of Merit, which they ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... woods belonging to the park, gathering violets, and had sat down, hot and tired, under a lovely chestnut, with my lap full of flowers which I was arranging and tying up in bunches in order to carry them home more easily. I heard footsteps, which I recognised by their briskness and firmness, and looking up I saw my brother approach, walking, as usual, erect, with his head well thrown back but with stern lines in his face which I had not seen there before. I looked up smiling, expecting his usual kind greeting, but instead of that he strode straight ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... other mariners—Cullen, Wife, and Neale—this Irish pirate shipped himself on board a French snow at Cork in November, 1721, for a passage to Nantes. Owing to Roche's briskness, genteel manners, and knowledge of navigation, the master used occasionally to place him in charge of the vessel. One night a few days out a pre-arranged mutiny took place, the French crew being butchered and thrown overboard. The captain, who pleaded ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... Whence indeed, but from me only, by whose procurement it is furnished with little of wisdom, and so with the less of disquiet? And when once lads begin to grow up, and attempt to write man, their prettiness does then soon decay, their briskness flags, their humours stagnate, their jollity ceases, and their blood grows cold; and the farther they proceed in years, the more they grow backward in the enjoyment of themselves, till waspish old age comes on, a burden to itself as well as others, and that so heavy and oppressive, as none ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... A certain briskness of manner, inspired by necessity, had come to him in these days of opulence. His position in life made its demands, and one of the most exacting of these denied him the privileges of familiarity. He would have liked nothing better than an hour or two a day of general conversation ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... the cries of paper-boys. The nurses whispered together excitedly in their leisure moments; the doctors seemed to acquire an added briskness. Once or twice she heard the measured tramp of feet in the streets below, as a regiment was moved from one quarters ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... of the newness, briskness, swift progress, wealth, intelligence, fine and substantial architecture, and general slash and go, and energy of St. Paul, will apply to his near neighbor, Minneapolis—with the addition that the latter is the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... more to it than that," observed Thorpe, with an added element of business-like briskness in his tone. "If I let you out in this way—something, of course, you could never have dreamed would happen—you must do some things for me. I should want you, for example, to go back to Mexico at once. Of course, I'd pay your expenses ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... interfere with each other. Of these applicants none pleased me. One of them was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, rather spare person, whose youthful energies had been so improved by years that I was sure her briskness of action, her promptness of speech, and her evident anxiety to get to work and to keep at it ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... side into the first cutter, which pulled away towards the ship. The gig immediately took her place, and the captain stepped into her. The cutter reached the Young America first, and the angry professor ran up the ladder with unwonted briskness. The principal was standing on the quarter, waiting to see the captain of the Josephine, for he was anxious to learn whether she had sustained any damage or lost any one overboard in the fierce storm. He knew that nothing but the most skilful seamanship could have ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... of the grass between the trees was paler, the black was blacker, as the two officers returned across the fields; to the hush of afternoon had succeeded the briskness of evening. Birds were awake and a breeze rustled in the branches; and Captain Hahn was ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... road, big ash-trees along the river, sheep, birds, sunshine, and showers—somehow contrive to keep themselves in health, to live, grow, decline, die, be born again, without making a mess or creating a fuss. The air, under the grey sky, is cool, even cold, with infinite briskness. And this impression of briskness, by no means excluded by the sense of utter isolation and repose, is greatly increased by a special charm of this place, the quantity of birds to listen to and watch; great blackening flights of rooks from the woods along the watercourses and sheltered hillsides ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... day, when she happened to be shopping in the winter briskness of the packed and brilliant Avenue, she telephoned Leslie at about the luncheon hour. Leslie when last they met had said that she would confidently expect Norma to run out and lunch with her some ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... with an aged, semi-military driver, pull up at the door, and the flutter of a veil as the vehicle passed through the entrance; and this was the only glimpse I ever caught of the little lady that dingy office called mistress. There was, however, a certain briskness in the movement of the clerks, and a glow of pleasure on their faces, that always denoted a visit; and very frequent those visits were. Without in any way obstructing it, her pretty interest seemed to throw a halo around the dull routine of trade; and, if there was any unpleasantness, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... if in embarrassment over an admission so at variance with the tenets of a lifetime. Then he spoke with sudden briskness: ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... his left. They were all in great spirits, and ate and drank freely, and though they complained of the size of the glasses, and of the strength of the wine, tasted every thing from punch to champagne: the briskness of the last indeed surprised them not a little, and effectually muddled two of them for some time. Cheese was the only thing they all objected to, probably on account of its being made of milk, which they never taste. The interpreter ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... project; he simply did not mention it and as it was known to have been communicated to him this represented effectively the policy of the closed door. He found himself even oftener in East Elgin, walking about on his pastoral errands with a fierce briskness of aspect and a sharp inquiring eye, before which one might say the proposition slunk away. Meanwhile, the Methodists who, it seemed, could tolerate decentralization, or anything short of round dances, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... toward these. Outside the garage he saw the chauffeur, with his livery coat off, polishing a fender. Great! Perhaps he could persuade the chauffeur to help him. He put on what he felt to be a New York briskness, furtively touched his tie again, and ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... now could only be compared to the wild desire for the woods a few weeks back! We made an early start. The team horses knew that road. They knew they were now on the way home. What difference that made! Jaded as they were they trotted along with a briskness never seen before on that trip. It began to be a job for us to keep up with Lee, who was on the wagon. Unless a rider is accustomed to horseback almost all of the time a continuous trot on a hard road will soon stove him up. My horse had an atrocious trot. Time and again I had to fall behind to ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... his attitudes from the serious stile, but to give them another turn and air in the composition; that he may avoid confounding the two different stiles of serious and half-serious. For this last, it is impossible to have too much agility and briskness. ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... came out with his usual smiling briskness and greeted Tom pleasantly. "Congratulations, Tommy," said he. "I suppose I'll see you among the big guns ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... I'll call up and ask when it is expected that he can see visitors," announced Fogg, with business briskness. "I wish Franklin had been here ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... occurred with all the briskness of a tune from a circus band. Sang darted for the corral fence. Now, three sides of the corral were railed, and so climbable, but the fourth was a solid adobe wall. Of course Sang went for the wall. There, finding his nails would not stick, he fled ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... had expected to see that figure; but vaguely he wished there were not so much briskness and self-confidence in the set of the massive head and shoulders. The young man believed absolutely in his love; but he would have been gratified to detect a something of depression in the enemy's air, which he might translate ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... terrible blow, made off across the plain, and with a few plunges flung its master to the ground. Don Quixote stood looking on very calmly, and, when he saw him fall, leaped from his horse and with great briskness ran to him, and, presenting the point of his sword to his eyes, bade him surrender, or he would cut his head off. The Biscayan was so bewildered that he was unable to answer a word, and it would have gone hard with him, so blind was Don Quixote, had not the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... would say upon that occasion, which whetted him to exceed himself, as well as others. Nevertheless, he could not, or would not, finish several subjects he undertook; which may be imputed either to the briskness of his fancy, still hunting after new matter, or to an occasional indolence, which spleen and lassitude brought upon him, which, of all his foibles, the world was least inclined to forgive. That this was not ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Aunt Chloe, heaping the smoking batter-cakes on his plate; "you know'd your old aunty'd keep the best for you. O, let you alone for dat! Go way!" And, with that, aunty gave George a nudge with her finger, designed to be immensely facetious, and turned again to her griddle with great briskness. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "There was not one of them, however, that came forward to help us—I am excepting, you understand, your father, Freme, and Holcomb. I owe them a debt of gratitude which I can never repay. Why have you come, Dinsmore?" he added, turning abruptly, with something of the briskness of his ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... people with whom Philip the Handsome engaged in and kept up, during the whole of his reign, with frequent alternations of defeat and success, a really serious war. In the thirteenth century, Flanders was the most populous and the richest country in Europe. She owed the fact to the briskness of her manufacturing and commercial undertakings, not only amongst her neighbors, but throughout Southern and Eastern Europe, in Italy, in Spain, in Sweden, in Norway, in Hungary, in Russia, and even as far as Constantinople, where, as we have seen, Baldwin I., ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... piety, polished by the classics and Oxford chapels, was what was in those days called Liberal, rather than Tory. What in Antony Buller was a conservative Christian meekness was in Lord Blatchford a progressive Christian briskness; but his belief in popular progress was accompanied by a smile at its incidents, as though it were a kind of frisking to which the masses ought to be welcome so long as it did not assume too practical a character or endanger any of the palings ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... do you?" responded the old woman in the same language. "Good! I am prepared for that. Wait but a moment, caro mio, until I can heat the broth, and your hunger shall soon be satisfied." And with the birdlike briskness which characterised all her actions she moved away into the shadows, presently returning with three iron rods in her hand, which she dexterously arranged in the form of a tripod over the fire, and from which she suspended a small iron pot. Then, taking a few dry sticks from a bundle heaped up near ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... had had something to do with her neighbor's ill-temper. But Miss Thornton, delicately approached, had proved so ungracious and so uncommunicative, that Miss Murray had retired into herself, and attacked her work with unusual briskness. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... fatigued though she was she pushed resolutely on, pausing only to care for the tired animal. At length the road entered a deep wood and she gave a sigh of relief as the grateful shade of the trees enveloped her. The horse too seemed to revive somewhat and went forward with more briskness. ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... forget in spite of myself, so very empty and trashy it is. I wonder, by the by, that it never came into my head to give the Colonel a dose of the cordial whereof I partook last night. I have no faith that it is a valuable medicine—little or none—and yet there has been an unwonted briskness in me ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... morning and the time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the vast privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you with one fixed particular subject or expression, but with a thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You may always ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Mrs. Dallington, with briskness and decision, 'no affectation between us. Drop this assumed unconcern. You know, you know well, that no incident could occur to you at this moment more mortifying than the one I have communicated, which deranges your plans, and probably may destroy your views. You cannot misconceive my ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... distance. Even for Mademoiselle it was almost impossible to keep on talking all alone, and her remarks gradually became fewer until the start homewards was made. Then the movement and the chill evening air seemed to restore her usual briskness, and she proceeded to describe to the children the exact situation of the "appartement" which she and Adolphe would occupy on their return to Paris, and make many brilliant plans for the future. As they entered the town, observing that her brother still remained silent ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... couch with tolerable briskness, after the last benediction, Mr Dombey took her arm in his and led her ceremoniously downstairs; one of the very tall young men on hire, whose organ of veneration was imperfectly developed, thrusting his tongue into his cheek, for the entertainment of the other very tall young man on hire, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... ask for it, say I keep it there, and told you where to find it, if you had need to go to my room. The descent is easy down the wall into the ditch; and so, once more farewell, until I see thee again, my dear son." And with this the intrepid Father mounted the buffet with great agility and briskness, stepped across the window, lifting up the bars and framework again from the other side, and only leaving room for Harry Esmond to stand on tiptoe and kiss his hand before the casement closed, the bars fixing as firmly as ever, seemingly, in the stone arch overhead. When Father ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... of the home of Doc and Miss Dennihan, they paused and stepped behind a fence, for the door of the neat little house was open and the lady herself was sweeping off the steps, with the briskness inseparable from ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... briskness and spirit into my walk, I went up to the door, which was standing open, most hospitably, and showing a large lighted hall, all hung round with spoils of the chase, armour, &c., the details of which I had not time to ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and then with great briskness, "Beastly grind, all the same." The Judge had a fit of coughing, and Urquhart got up and looked about. Then the Judge said that he too should catch it if he didn't go ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... movement was only a diversion under cover of which we might have a chance to escape, but it was being executed with so much briskness and spirit that Bothwell could ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... into the corral with her usual briskness, and, walking deliberately past him, turned up an empty box in a far corner and sat down upon it, and called to him. From the instant of her entrance he had held himself back, but when she called him he rushed eagerly to her side. She placed her arms around his neck, drew his head down into ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... temperament, an eye sharp to detect failings or foolishness, an admirer of briskness and vivacity, why did she welcome John Duck, that incarnation of stolidity and slowness, that enormous mountain of a man? Because extremes meet? No, since she was always complaining of Iden's dull, motionless life; so it was not the contrast to her ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... a small, plump, fair woman, with a bright, clear eye, and an extraordinary air of neatness and briskness. But these qualities were evidently combined with an unaffected humility, and the Doctor gave her his esteem as soon as he had looked at her. A brave little person, with lively perceptions, and yet a disbelief in her ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... smile overwhelming her air of briskness. "We'd appreciate the opportunity to discuss ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... with evident ill will. He had wakened in good spirits, but was fast returning to his sullenness of the previous day. He took his time in going from the bench-mark to the first turning point. Blake moved up past him with inspiring briskness, but the younger man kept to his leisurely saunter. In rounding the corner of the hill twice as much time was ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... the red umbrella and the jewelled card-case with reviving briskness, and shakes out her crumpled chiffons in the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... river which Baroudi had mentioned to Nigel. They lay on the western bank of the Nile, between Luxor and Armant, and at a considerable distance from Luxor. But it chanced that the wind was fair, and blew with an unusual briskness from the north. The sailors set the great lateen sails of the felucca, which bellied out like things leaping into life. The greenish-brown water curled and whispered about the prow, and the minarets of Luxor seemed to retreat swiftly from ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... few men like—him." Brigit took a sock out of the basket and looked at it absently. There was a short silence, during which Felicite did not speak, but she was watching her visitor in the glass. Then she said suddenly, with a certain briskness in her voice, "Shall I tell you about him? About my husband, you know, not about the great artist of—all ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... learned gentleman, smiling rather sadly, 'one can go so far in dreams, when one is young.' He sighed again, and then adding with a laboured briskness, 'I hope you'll have a—a—jolly game,' he went into his room and ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... for you will like to know my feelings, that I felt so overwhelmed with this news as not to be able to go about my usual business. Yet the rest on board the vessel has been very grateful to me. The quiet cheerfulness and briskness will all come again, as I think; and yet I think too that I shall be an older and more thoughtful man by ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Others were distributed along the gun and berth-decks, with similar orders; and, to crown all, several carronade guns were unshipped from their carriages, and swung in their breechings from the beams of the main-deck, so as to impart a sort of vibratory briskness and oscillating buoyancy to ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... several lines of infantry and cavalry, and saluted the colours as he passed, BONAPARTE (attended by all his retinue, including a favourite Mamaluk whom he brought from Egypt), took a central position, when the different corps successively filed off before him with most extraordinary briskness; the corps composing the consular guard preceded those of the garrison and all the others: on inquiry, however, I find, that this order is not ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... briskness: "I've an important fact. Just had Markes on secret wave-length. He tells me that Spawn has been saving up his quicksilver for six months past. He's got several hundred thousand dollar-standards' worth of it in ingots there ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... see;" said Madame von Marwitz, with a certain briskness, as though, still, to give herself time to think. "It might have been wiser to wait—to wait for a little. I would have written to you. We could have consulted. It is serious, you know, my Karen, very serious, to leave one's husband. I went ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... — N. activity; briskness, liveliness &c. adj.; animation, life, vivacity, spirit, dash, energy; snap, vim. nimbleness, agility; smartness, quickness &c. adj.; velocity, &c. 274; alacrity, promptitude; despatch, dispatch; expedition; haste &c. 684; punctuality &c. (early) 132. eagerness, zeal, ardor, perfervidum aingenium[Lat][obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a farewell reception given by the officers and the C.P.O.'s to the men departing after their twenty-one days in Probation, so the first thing I did when I went in was to shake hands with an Ensign, who I thought was receiving. He got rid of my hand with the same briskness that one removes a live coal from one's person. The whole proceeding struck me as being a sort of charity bazaar. People were wandering around from booth to booth, in a pleasant sociable manner, passing a word here and sitting down there in the easiest-going way imaginable. ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... with his customary spirit; he moved with his customary briskness—he had become quite himself again, since I ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... was a busy woman, with no time for day-dreams and she was often annoyed (and secretly alarmed) at her son's tendency to wander off into a world of his own making. Now she shook him, but gently, and spoke with her usual briskness. ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... yet acquired the serene sense of conservative self-satisfaction and repose which centuries of age may bestow, the spirit of life itself is the aspiration for change. Ambition itself only means the insistence on change. Each day is to be better than yesterday fuller of plans, of briskness, of initiative. Each to-day demands of to-morrow new men, new minds, new work. A to-day which has not launched new ships, explored new countries, constructed new buildings, added stories to old ones, may consider itself a failure, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Captain," said Jean, assuming an air of briskness the confusion of her face belied. "Come away in, I am proud to see you ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... bag open with businesslike briskness. "Concussion. Got a glancing blow from the light fixture. Seems as if she'd been trying to wrap herself up in the bedclothes and got in the worst ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... of answering my request to have a pair of shoes cleaned which I have left up-stairs, she plies imaginary brushes, and goes completely through the motions of polishing the shoes up, and laying them at my feet. I smile at the brisk little woman in perfect satisfaction with her briskness; and the brisk little woman, amiably pleased with me because I am pleased with her, claps her hands and laughs delightfully. We are in the inn yard. As the little woman's bright eyes sparkle on the cigarette I am smoking, I make bold to offer her one; she accepts it none ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... An unwonted briskness—portentous apparently of coming speech—did certainly at that moment enliven the curate's manner. He jerked his head from side to side like a bird; he cleared his throat, and clasped his hands, and looked with a gentle interest at the company. Getting into spirits seemed, in the case of this ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... experience it had sometimes happened that Gertie, on the way home, found herself spoken to by a stranger; this rarely occurred, because she walked with briskness, and refrained from glancing at other pedestrians. (Generally the intruder was a youth anxious to make or sustain a reputation for gallantry, and he accepted the sharp rebuff with docility.) But news came from Miss Loriner that Lady Douglass, after years of the luxury of imagining ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... himself, because, as he said, he liked not only to talk to a sensible man but also to hear what a sensible man had to say. He never stood still for a moment, but kept "bobbing around" with the effervescent briskness of a bee, at one time roosting at the top of the ladder, at another peering through the floor light, now to the right, then to the left, always humming scraps from the Opera Bouffe, but never changing ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... a note and changed to his dinner jacket he rejoined them in the drawing-room. Barbara held out her hand to Letty, with a briskness indicating relief. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... which has been too little appreciated, and he was fortunate in that the work which fell to him, at the first, and again at the last of this war, was peculiarly suited to his professional characteristics; but he was not interchangeable with Rodney. In the latter there was a briskness of temper, a vivacity, very distinguishable from Howe's solidity of persistence; and he was in no sense one to permit "discipline to come to nought," the direction in which Howe's easy though reserved disposition tended. The West ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... summer afternoons, flitted in bareheaded loveliness from door to door, have changed with the changing times. The loveliness is perhaps more striking, less distinctive; with the flower-like heads have passed the old grace and the old dependence, and the undulatory walk has quickened into buoyant briskness. It is all modern—as modern as the red brick walls that are building where a quaint mansion ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... more briskness, not only lured by the chance of coming up with the herd of rein-deer, but pursued by the moss-grown phantom of a mountain couch. An endless forest of firs lay on our right hand, and the nearer we approached it, the more clearly we could hear the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... had accompanied him to the consulate, there entered a tall, active man, very well dressed, with black, thick-curling hair and keen, blue eyes. He seemed under thirty years of age, but had the self-confident manner of a man of the world, and a great briskness of demeanor and speech. He sat down and began to tell of his experiences; he had been all over the world, and knew everything about the world's affairs, even the secrets of courts and the coming movements ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... after four in the morning. He dozed in his seat, the grateful breath of the summer night fanning his face through the screen. The Duke found him there, appearing as he had departed, his coat on his arm, his collar in his hand. He was full of the briskness of the dawn in spite of ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... . . . Let me see, what size were you saying? H'm, six-seven-eighths, as I should judge." Young Mr Benny pulled out a drawer with briskness, ran his hand through a number of genuine Panamas of identical pattern, selected one, and poised it on the tips of his fingers, giving it the while a seductive twist. "If you will stand so, Captain, while I ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Fortification, it will have the Advantage of them, for the further you lye off, the more Guns they can bring to bear against you; whereas, when you go so near, there can no more Guns annoy you, than are mounted within the Length of your Ship; and the Difference of Briskness in firing, betwixt a Ship and a Fort, is so great, besides the Odds in Number of Guns, that it is impossible to withstand a Ship long. After this Experiment ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... in a way which suggested that (although his white waistcoat outlined an ellipse still respectable) a crescendo of portliness was playing diminuendo with his youth. And, though his walk was brisk, it was not lively. The expression of his very red face indicated that his briskness was spurred by anxiety, and a fattish groan he emitted on the top step added the impression that his comfortable body protested against the mental spur. In the hall he removed his narrow-brimmed straw hat and ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... our little fellows was very ill, my Lord,' said Lance, excitement restoring something of his natural briskness. 'We thought he was going to have the cholera, and I went to get something for him. The chemists' shops were shut, so I ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the State Fair were of a different character. The audiences were composed of leading men from nearly all the counties of the State. Though the discussion of party questions had been going on all summer with more or less briskness, yet such was the general confusion in politics that many honest and intelligent voters and even leaders were still undecided in their opinions. The fair continued nearly a week. Douglas made a speech on the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... and replying to another, will not make these objections, because the consciousness of his own literary perils will make him tender in his judgments. And yet there is something even in the pressure of business which sometimes promotes briskness of mind, since the art of speaking is one which is placed very much ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Marilla, gustily. She felt a dismal suspicion that this was going to daunt her. But her habit of facing things came to the front. "Wednesday's only four days off," she said, with a fine assumption of briskness. "I don't suppose he said anything about ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... through Georgetown now M Street was different—full of marketers and of briskness. The old bridge was crowded. As her car swooped up the hills and skirted the curves to Polly Widdicombe's she began to be afraid again. But she was committed to the adventure and she was eager for the worst of it. She found the house without trouble and saw in the white grove of columns Polly herself, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... but all of us suffered alike. They made themselves thoroughly disliked by their foul talk and abuse, and if anything tended more than another to show me that theirs was a moral unfitness for travel, it was the briskness assumed when they knew they were going back to the coast. I felt inclined to force them on, but it would have been acting from revenge, and to pay them out, so I forbore. I gave Mataka forty-eight yards of calico, and to the sepoys eighteen yards, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... mental fatigue ... In the morning these drinks remove the last traces of sleepiness and in the evening when we still have intellectual tasks to dispose of they aid in keeping us awake." Their use induces a greater briskness and clearness of thought, after which secondary fatigue is either entirely absent or is ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of wit more than vulgar: it seeming to argue a rare quickness of parts, that one can fetch in remote conceits applicable; a notable skill, that he can dexterously accommodate them to the purpose before him; together with a lively briskness of humour, not apt to damp those sportful flashes of imagination. (Whence in Aristotle such persons are termed [Greek], dexterous men; and [Greek], men of facile or versatile manners, who can easily turn themselves to all things, or turn all things to themselves.) ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... features did not strike me as anything out of the ordinary, but the whole face had an air of ability, cleverness, briskness, and health. The Emperor is about middle height, with the body very erect, the walk firm, and is very energetic in his gestures. I did not notice the shortness of the left arm, but that may have been because his left hand was leaning on his sword-hilt. Captain H—— told ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... never given me any reason to think otherwise," she said. Her secret agitation peeped out in the added briskness of her tones. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... with dread of apoplexy, and who moves heavily under the burden of himself,—such a man is a doleful and disagreeable object. But if he have vivacity enough to pervade all his earthiness, and bodily force enough to move lightly under it, and if it be not too unmeasured to have a trimness and briskness in it, then it is good and wholesome to ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... opened suddenly, "I have so little time." His briskness dropped into a half complaint, like a faintly suggested avowal of impotence. "I have been at it four years now. It struck me—you seemed to coincide ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... every three hours for the first eight fillings. Thus managed, this single ale was fit to send out the fifth day after brewing. When this ale is racking off the butts, to be sent out, would recommend putting two ounces of ground rice into each barrel which will create briskness, and much improve the beer. Ran the small beer into the hop back of the strong beer, and so on the coolers, thereby giving it a chance to lick up all the strong ale it met with in its progress to the tun, which it entered at 65 with three ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... hill, however insignificant its altitude, is always an inspiring vantage point from which to survey the surrounding world. There is a briskness of atmosphere on a hilltop which is inspiriting to the most jaded of faculties; there is a sparkling vitality in the breath of the morning air which must ever make life a joy and the world seem an inexpressible delight in which it is the acme of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... made this foil of his so very widely known, that third parties took it up, and handled it on some occasions with considerable briskness. It was one of the most exasperating attributes of Bounderby, that he not only sang his own praises but stimulated other men to sing them. There was a moral infection of clap-trap in him. Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, started ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... wile, and determination with a firmness of which gentleness is the warp and woof. While it lasts, and when the fish are in a sporting humour, there is nothing more exciting than sea-trout angling. Perhaps for briskness of sport one ought to bracket with it the Mayfly carnival of the non-tidal trout streams in the generally hot days of early June, when the English meadows are in all their glory, and the fish for a few days cast shyness to the green and ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... o'clock Bertheroy put in an appearance. Although he was sixty-eight, he showed as much briskness and sprightliness as any young sawbones calling in a friendly way to perform a little operation. He had brought an instrument case, some linen bands and some lint. However, he became angry on finding the injured man nervous, flushed ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... dazed by the onslaught, had turned and looked at the door which had closed behind him with a briskness which seemed to say "Good riddance," and muttered, thinking of the clerk's one sanguine suggestion: "Personality! I might as well ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... stood at the flap entrance of each, inviting people to enter and see these wonders of nature for a moderate sum. Near by was the lemonade wagon, whose proprietor was handing out glasses of his fluid with a briskness that showed that many ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... dismissed the taxi and walked briskly to the huge waiting-room. There she dropped the briskness, and went leisurely down its long length to the drug stand, where she bought a few stamps and then passed out through the middle aisle to the train shed, inquiring on the way of an attendant the time of the next express from Baltimore. ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... old woman, Granny Hall, looking like another creature, smoke-dried and withered indeed, but all briskness and animation. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... which alone deserves the name of eloquence, and which must carry distinction with it wherever men are gathered together. The next is, that adroit and practical style of speaking by which the details of public business are carried forward; a style which requires briskness of capacity, united to extent of information, and in which the briskness must not be suffered to become flippant, and the detail to become dull. We are perfectly confident, that, beyond those two classes, no speaker can ever expect to retain the ear of the House. Our theory, however, is not the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... briskness of the street, with its lamps aglitter in the lingering May evening, O'Neill entered to the sober gloom and the restless echoes of the great studio. He had come to hate the place of late. The high poise of its ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... born of the copious dews, the fragrant nights, the tender skies, the plentiful rains of the early season. The singing of birds is in it, and the health and frolic of lusty Nature. It is the product of liquid May touched by the June sun. It has the tartness, the briskness, the unruliness of spring, and the aroma ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... but as we see him, he is the boarder reduced to the simplest expression of that term. Yet, like most human creatures, he has generic and specific characters not unworthy of being studied. I notice particularly a certain electrical briskness of movement, such as one may see in a squirrel, which clearly belongs to his calling. The dry-goodsman's life behind his counter is a succession of sudden, snappy perceptions and brief series of coordinate ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... nervous quickness in his movements, and a certain shrillness in his voice, but the sitter gave no heed to these tokens, which he would have regarded as of no importance had he seen them. The talk was at first rather rambling, and was not kept up with much briskness on either side. Fenton, indeed, was so absorbed in the task which lay before him that he hardly followed the other's remarks, and he suddenly became aware that he had lost the thread of conversation altogether, so that he could not possibly imagine what the connection ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... at him again through narrowing eyelids, the playfulness all vanished. "You do yourself injustice, sir, as I am a woman. Your wits want nothing more in briskness." She rose, and looked down upon him engrossed in his broth. "For a dissembler, sir," she pronounced upon him acidly, "I think it would be ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... own. The three epithets, "wandering," "slow," and "solitary," are all censured by him. Our first parents, he remarks, were guided by Providence, and therefore needed not to wander; they were reassured by Michael's predictions, and so might well display an engaging briskness; while as for "their solitary way," they were no more solitary than in Paradise, "there being no Body besides Them Two, both here and there." He therefore suggests a distich more agreeable ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... to hand with unwonted briskness, and Mr. Pickwick, looking round on the faces of his friends with a cheerful smile, proceeded—'All the changes that have taken place among us,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'I mean the marriage that HAS taken place, and the marriage that WILL take place, with the changes they involve, rendered ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... in which there is not a dull page, nay, not even a dull line. The characters are well drawn, the incidents are novel and often astounding, and the language has a terseness and briskness that gives a character of vivacity to the story, so that the reader is never tired going on unravelling the tangled meshes of the intricate plot until he comes to the end. 'A Social Upheaval' is, indeed, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt |
