"Effortless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it bothers me a lot," Cal said to the two E's, following the review, "that Eden should be more favorable to effortless human existence than Earth." ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... part desperate. What should commend my counsel to you is even this: a road most pleasant and most brief, a carriage road of downward slope, shall bring you in all delight and ease, at what leisurely effortless pace you will, through flowery meadows and plenteous shade, to that summit which you shall mount and hold untired and there lie feasting, the while you survey from your height those panting ones who ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... pilgrim-chorus ejaculated, their eyes growing the wider as their lips moistened. For behold, the eggs were now cooked to a turn; the long-handled pan was being lifted with the effortless skill of long practice, the omelette was rolled out at just the right instant of consistency, and was being as quickly turned into ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... and melt, harden and halt instantly in a new shape; and evenly and steadily the ranked fours swing off, turn out into the road, and go tramping down between the poplars. There has been no flurry, no hustle, no confusion. The whole thing has moved with the smoothness and precision and effortless ease of a properly adjusted, well-oiled machine—which, after all, is just what the regiment is. The pace is apparently leisurely, or even lazy, but it eats up the miles amazingly, and it can be kept up with the shortest of ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... through the forest of pillars; so effortless, so smooth our flight that we seemed to be standing still, the tremendous columns flitting past us, turning and wheeling around us, dizzyingly. My head swam with the mirage motion, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... right," said Mark; but Mak only laughed and signed to them to come on, gliding in among the huge columnar trees for about half an hour, and in the most effortless way pressing on, looking back from time to time to see that ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... seventeen miles of road ahead, but the browns made little of them. They had come into the township the evening before, and had done nothing since but eat the hotel oats and wish to be out of a close stable and back in their own free paddocks. They took the hills at a swift, effortless trot, and on the down slopes broke into a hand-gallop; light-hearted, but conscious all the time of the hand on the reins, that was as steel, yet light as a feather upon a tender mouth. They danced merrily to one side when they ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... aboard his raft with all his earthly possessions bestowed about him, awaiting the rains and freshets that were to waft him effortless into a newer country where he should have a white man's chance. At last the rains came, and he cast off from the bank at that unsalubrious spot where his father had elected to build his cabin on a strip of level bottom ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... to her that her breath was gone utterly, that her feet were leaden weights and her muscles limply effortless. But after him she plunged, panting and scrambling up the rocks, and then, very suddenly, they found themselves to be on only a plateau and the real mountain head ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... a magnificent chest rose above the rail, and, with what seemed effortless ease, the whole grand body followed over the rail and noiselessly trod the deck. Brown, who might have been other things than the mate of an island schooner, was enchanted. All that he had ever gleaned from the books proclaimed indubitably the faun-likeness of this visitant of the deep. "But ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... conscious of an attraction. Mr. Osmond talked of many things; Madame Merle had said he could be agreeable when he chose, and to-day, after a little, he appeared not only to have chosen but to have determined. Madame Merle and the Countess Gemini sat a little apart, conversing in the effortless manner of persons who knew each other well enough to take their ease; but every now and then Isabel heard the Countess, at something said by her companion, plunge into the latter's lucidity as a poodle splashes after a thrown stick. It was as if Madame Merle ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... were judged in this world rather by what they were Nobody can spoil a life, my dear One does not precisely choose with whom one will fall in love Only sort of life that doesn't hurt anybody; except art Parasitically clinging on to the effortless close of a life Private possession underlay everything worth having Purpose of marriage was children, not mere sinful happiness Question so moot that it was not mooted Quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre talent ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... from a July sun, which threw its scorching brilliancy over the whole landscape before them. They seemed to enjoy to the full that delightful retired openness which an English park affords, and that easy effortless communion which only old companionship can give. They were, in fact, fellow collegians. The one, Reginald Darcy by name, was a ward of Mr Sherwood, the wealthy proprietor of Lipscombe Park; the other, his friend, Charles Griffith, was passing a few days with him in this agreeable retreat. They ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... in the south. The blue sky grew pale under the heat, and became pearl-gray. A hawk in seemingly effortless flight was soaring, and describing larger and larger circles as it rose. At a distance of several hundred yards lay the peacock-blue, shimmering surface of a river, and lazily carried onward the mirrored reflection of the alders; from their ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... Graceful and effortless as the mounting lark, Reginald Currier rose and soared. When he again touched earth, it was only to go spinning into a far corner where he first embraced, then strove with and was finally tripped and thrown by a large and lurking waste-basket. Somewhat perturbed, he extricated ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... lecture by Professor Owen on the Solan Goose, which was illustrated by the clouds of geese flying over us. They freely exhibited their habits on land as well as in mid-air, and skimmed the dizzy crags with graceful and apparently effortless motions. The vast variety of seafowl screamed their utmost, and gave a wonderfully illustrative chorus to the lecture. It was a most impressive scene. We were high above the deep blue sea of the German Ocean, the waves ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... stood the fairy castle of our hopes, with its fountains, its pictures, its many mystical figures in repose. Ever could we rove over those sunny distances, breathing that modulated wind, eyeing those so well-blended, imaginative, yet thoughtful surfaces, and above us wide—wide a horizon effortless and superb ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... Secretly, perhaps, neither of us wanted to give the other a chance by stooping for a heavy girl; I knew I was not going to do it. But Paulette must have feared I was. She sprang past me and lifted Marcia with smooth, effortless strength, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... thought his noblest work, the large altar-piece, dated 1522, his forty-fifth year, of SS. Nazaro e Celso, at Brescia, is certainly a religious—a great, religious painter. The famous Gabriel of the Annunciation, aflight, in all the effortless energy of an angel indeed, and Sebastian, adapted, it was said, from an ancient statue, yet as novel in design as if Titian had been the first to handle that so familiar figure in old religious art—may represent for us a vast and varied amount of work—in which he expands ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... were clear marks of violence. I found the old man's body in the moonlight Hanging beneath the window of his chamber, Among the branches of a pine: he could not Have fallen there, for all his limbs lay heaped 75 And effortless; 'tis true there was no blood... Favour me, Sir; it much imports your house That all should be made clear; to tell the ladies That I request ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... with a companion this being emitted a disgusting smoothness, his very gestures were oily like his skin. He wore a pair of bloated wristless hands, the knuckles lost in fat, with which he smoothed the air from time to time. He was speaking low and effortless French, completely absorbed in the developing ideas which issued fluently from his mustachios. About him there clung an aura of cringing. His hair whiskers and neck looked as if they were trick neck whiskers and hair, as if they ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... form provided. He does this with a lively facility, contrasting much with the evidence of labour in his master's work. Slowness and deliberation are the last qualities suggested by Herrick. Yet it may be doubted whether the volatile ease, the effortless grace, the wild bird-like ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... his slight body through the door a few minutes later, found a suspicious scene. The little doctor, his face flushed and rage-twisted, his effortless and almost contemptuous composure shaken for once, was on his feet. Speechless, he faced the grinning space-engineer who was waving a huge and warning finger ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... feeling of reaction, or of mental effort. In this case there is no distinct reference to the needs of the self, and a lack of that focusing of attention necessary to give the consciousness a meaning and purpose in the life of the individual. All such passive, or effortless, states of consciousness, which make up those portions of mental existence in which no definite presentation seems to hold the attention, although falling within the sphere of the scientific psychologist, may nevertheless be left out ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... a gentle light upon the broad square, he began to sing softly, wondering that he should have any voice left after what he had suffered; but great singers are not like other men, at least as to their throats, and after a few trials the rich notes floated out deliciously, as effortless and as true, as soft and as strong as ever, in those marvellous love-songs of his own that thrilled all Italy while ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... enough about this personage to make her very curious; and her eyes took keen note of him. She saw a tall, upright figure, with that free poise of bearing which is a compound of strength and ease; effortless, quiet, graceful, and dignified. Though in part the result of a certain symmetry of joints and practised activity in the use of them, this sort of bearing refers itself also, and yet more surely, to the character, and makes upon the beholder the impression again of strength and ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... and to Milt it was pure beauty, it was release from life, to soar up coaxing inclines and slip down easy grades in the powerful car. "No more Teals for me," he cried, in the ecstasy of handling an engine that slowed to a demure whisper, then, at a touch of the accelerator, floated up a rise, effortless, joyous, humming the booming song of the joy in speed. He suddenly hated the bucking tediousness of the Teal. The Gomez-Dep symbolized his ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... happened briefly the night of the Blackbird's wrecking, he experienced that feeling of dumb protest against the shaping of events in which he moved helpless. This bit of flesh and blood swaying in his arms in effortless rhythm to sensuous music was something he had to reckon with powerfully, whether he liked or not. MacRae was beginning dimly to see that. When he was ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a great show of studying the card and succeeded in pocketing the bill with the same effortless sleight-of-hand that the other had used in handing ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... and with a grim smile on his lips Weir walked slowly towards Vorse. In his tread there was something of the quality of a tiger's, the light, deliberate, poised advance, the easy and dangerous movement of body, the effortless glide of a powerful animal ready to spring and strike. His hands swung idly at his sides, but that did not mean they would not be swift once they responded to the call of the ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... a certain care in the selection of the words, but with ease and an absence of effort, as though languages were instinctive to him—as though he could speak any language. And he impressed one with this same effortless facility in all the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... to her peace; lifted up and swept, effortless, into the place of heavenly help. Anne's soul had no longer to reach out her hand and feel her way to God, for it was God who sought for her and found her. She heard behind her, as it were, the footsteps of the divine pursuing power. Once more, as in the mystic days before her ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... its accomplished beauty. And Verona possesses, in the last place, the loveliest Renaissance architecture of Italy, not disturbed by pride, nor defiled by luxury, but rising in fair fulfilment of domestic service, serenity of effortless grace, and modesty of home seclusion; its richest work given to the windows that open on the narrowest streets and most silent gardens. All this she possesses, in the midst of natural scenery such as assuredly exists nowhere else in the habitable globe—a wild Alpine ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... worried beforehand. "As a lecture," wrote the Yorkshire Weekly Post after a performance in this year (1911), "it was a fiasco, but as an exhibition of Chesterton it was pleasing." Although his writing appeared almost effortless he did in fact take far more pains about it than he did in preparing for a lecture. He seemed quite incapable of remembering the time or place of appointment, or of getting there on time, if at all. Stories are told of his non-appearance ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... possible to hold my attention, or, rather, to have my heart held, without wavering, upon the one supreme reality, the sheer fact of God. These are the moments that I feel to be true worship. These are the times when the effort to have faith is superseded by an effortless assurance born of actual experience. God's reality is felt in every fibre of the soul and brings convincement even to ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... unwrinkled, firm in physical as in moral character; calm in the unresisted power of intellect and will over the passions, serene in a dignity too absolute and self-contained for pride, but expressing a consciousness of command over others as evident as the unconscious, effortless command of self to which it owed its supreme and sublime quietude. The lips were not set as with a habit of reserve or self-restraint, but close and even as in the repose to which restraint had never been necessary. The features were large, clearly defined, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... twenty yards from the window, a thrush sits and sings. You must watch him carefully ere you assure yourself that those sweet, trilling notes of peerless music come from that tiny throat. A rare lesson in voice production he will teach you. Deep breathing, headnotes clear as a bell and effortless, as only three or four singers in Europe can produce them, without the slightest sense of strain or throatiness—such are the songs of our most gifted ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... efficiency, courtesy, and duty. Its fault is a sense of perfect rightness and self-sufficiency, an overvaluing of sport and games, an undervaluing of intellectual interests, enthusiasm, ideas. It is not that the sense of effortless superiority is to be emphasized or insisted upon—modesty entirely forbids that—but it is the sort of feeling described ironically in the book of Job, when the patriarch says to the elders, "No ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Bessie Lonsdale that fantastic ride in which she felt herself being carried forward, as if on the effortless wings of fate itself, to the very scene ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... art, and gives a feeling to the listener that the singer, whose work he has enjoyed, has even more in reserve than he has given out. That sense of reserve force is one of the greatest triumphs of art. It is largely the result of effortless breathing, in which it is not necessary or even desirable that the singer always should strive to fill the lungs to the utmost, since that induces an obvious effort which diminishes the listener's enjoyment. Moreover, ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... Tranquil and effortless thou glidest on, As doth the swan upon the yielding water, And with a cheek like alabaster cold! But as thou didst divide the amorous air Just opposite the Astor, and didst lift That vail of languid lashes to look in At Leary's tempting window—lady! then ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... The even and effortless force of the poem, the disappearance of inequalities and faults of taste, showed that Dryden was at last master of his powers. But it was not this nervous strength alone which suddenly brought him to the forefront of English letters. It was the general sense that his "Absalom" was the opening ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... the deftness and precision of his short turns, the promptness with which he compelled them to gather speed after the turn, these were astonishing, enough; but far more astonishing were his grace of pose, his perfect form in every motion, the ease of all his manoeuvres, the sense of his effortless control of his vehicle, of reserve strength greatly in excess of the strength he exerted; these were nothing short of dazzling. His pride in his artistry, for it amounted to that, and his enjoyment ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... in full view resting on my thigh, being minded to look as murderous as possible, but she stole all my thunder by suddenly snatching the rifle away and drawing back its bolt to cock the spring with that almost effortless adroitness that ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... For it has to be borne in mind that the values and norms farthest removed from the regions of sense and intellect appear only when man follows the drift of his own higher being; it is not when he remains effortless and satisfied with the life of the hour that such values and norms appear. They appear when the ordinary life is seen through as no more than a stage for the further evolution of the soul through the grasping of a higher kind of reality than has as yet presented itself to it. As Eucken ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... Kane, every movement as effortless as the flight of the silvery winged Mayther, thrust forth his hand to the dash again, pressed another button. Instantly the propellers vanished into a blur as the vanes of the helicopter dropped down the slender staff and the vanes themselves fitted snugly into ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... Indeed, it was a curious phenomenon to observe how all these young minds, sprung from a stock of such ancient, unquestioning faith, had, so to say, been born "poisoned;" or, to state the matter less metaphorically, had all been born with instincts for the most pitiless and effortless reasoning on all subjects human ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... aesthetic purposes. But, as I watch these vessels drifting down through the golden afternoon, or cheerily beating up against the tide on a breezy morning, the man at the wheel is a very model of unconscious grace and almost effortless ascendency; and his shipmates, grouped about him like floating lotos-eaters, have ever a touch of the fine old Ulyssean vagrancy. Now and then there stands out before the breeze and the sunlight a great canvassed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... unequal footsteps on the empty street. Cosgrave and Connie Edwards nodded to one another and took hands and were gone. Francey, too, slipped to her feet. She gathered up her hat and coat, her silence effortless. She did not so much as glance at Robert, but at the head of the steep, ladder-like ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... with careful precision as to the accents of her German, in a high breathy effortless soprano, a little song about a child and ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... him, from towering hopes degraded, Mortals lie low and still Tireless and effortless, works forth its will The arm divine! God from His holy seat, in calm of unarmed power, Brings forth the deed, at its appointed hour! Let Him look down on mortal wantonness! Lo! how the youthful stock of Belus' line Craves for me, uncontrolled— With greed and madness ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... they turn to the right hand or the left, hesitate or hurry in crossing the road, recognise and act upon the bicycle bell and the cabman's shout, by using the same process of inference to guide the same group of impulses. Their inferences are for the most part effortless, though sometimes they will both be seen to pause until they have settled some point by wordless deliberation. It is only when a decision has to be taken affecting the more distant purposes of his life that the man enters on a region of definitely ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... down by a few hours of vigorous, absorbed attention in a library, gaining strength of mind by resolute encountering of difficulties, by personal effort, we sit around for a month or a season in a club, expecting somehow to take the information by effortless contiguity with it. A book which we could master and possess in an evening we can have read to us in a month in the club, without the least intellectual effort. Is there nothing, then, in the exchange of ideas? Oh yes, when there are ideas to exchange. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... shadow of a doubt, for though it was the first time he had been able to watch the stallion at close hand he recognized the long and effortless swing of that gallop. Next he remembered those stories of the charmed life and the tales he had mocked at before now became possible truths. He caught up his gun to make sure, but when his left hand slipped under the barrel to the balance ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... sullenly. It was a place of which the influence and magic were not good. Even in May, when the lilacs frothed into purple, paved the lawn with shadows, steeped the air with scent; when soft leaves lipped each other consolingly; when blackbirds sang, fell in their effortless way from the green height to the green depth, and sang again—still, something that haunted the place set the heart fluttering. No place is its own, and that which is most stained with old tumults ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... thing. She grew hot, she grew quite cold, and suddenly she began to sob. Oh, no, no, not that. A flood of tossing thoughts came rioting and racing in, flinging crests of foam, like white and beaten water. She for a time was swept about, a weed in this fury of storm. She was lost, effortless, at death's threshold. But she awoke herself from the nightmare, walked herself about, and reason returned. It was nonsense, unwholesome nonsense. Why, that first time, he was in the library with James and Francis Lingen, his second ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... stone deafer. And all the while his rollicking fun, and quaintly sudden turn of word and idea were transporting his readers, as he somewhere says, "from Dull-age to Grin-age." His humour was effervescent, continuous, and effortless—not like Jerrold's wit, intermittent flashes called up at need—but overflowing in a rich stream of joke, pun, hit, crank, and quip, covering a field far wider than ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... eagerly, with both hands, forgetting everything but that time was short and existence full of joy. I sat in the warm sunshine, inhaling the pleasant odours, reminding myself that I had no duty to do then, or the morrow, or the day after. I lay a-bed thinking how happy, effortless and free would be my day. Mounting my horse, I clattered through the narrow streets, over the cobbles, till I came to the country; the air was fresh and sweet, and Aguador loved the spring mornings. When he put his feet to the springy turf he gave a little shake ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... form and color. Her eyes met his eyes, and they were very serene and calm and confident. She smiled at him, and the new contours into which her face fell with the smile were more perfect than before. He watched the turn of her head, and the grace of the movement was the uttermost effortless grace one dreams that a queen should have. The heart of Ste. Marie quickened in him, and he would have gone ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... lately lain. And the sky! Filled with clouds almost as fleecy and as white as June, the sky covered him, and when he raised his eyes to it he saw a triangular flock of geese sweeping to the northwest, serene and apparently effortless. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength; the plains and the lower hills are the repose and the effortless motion of the frame, when its muscles lie dormant and concealed beneath the lines of its beauty,—yet ruling those lines in their every undulation. This then is the first grand principle of the truth of the earth. ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... up on his feet. It was an impressively effortless motion. There was a thick wide torso on short thick legs under the golden fur. The structure was gorilla-like. Pilli might ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... that number. Transcendental friends inquired, with more refined severity, if the proprietor expected to meditate in that thing? This doubt at least seemed legitimate. Meditation seems to belong to sailing rather than rowing; there is something so gentle and unintrusive in gliding effortless beneath overhanging branches and along the trailing edges of clematis thickets;—what a privilege of fairy-land is this noiseless prow, looking in and out of one flowery cove after another, scarcely stirring the turtle from his log, and leaving ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... "gentle reader." Or one might say it was a book of the primitive kind, written on the bark of trees by some shy dryad, unconcious translator into speech of the rustlings and whisperings of the woodland. It is, as the editor observes, an "effortless narrative," with "no attempt at fine or sensational writing, ... at that modern artifice which they call word-painting," but recording with "vivid exactness" what was seen and felt by the writer and her companions on a journey through ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... other arm should go to her, too. This side of her there could be nothing for either to close upon. It appeared to me that I fell asleep on this fancy and dreamt that I awoke painfully to a poor, one-sided life, effortless, barren, forbidding. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... those in "La Veine," and not less entertaining. The mounting, simple as it was, was admirably planned; the stage-pictures full of explicit drollery. And, as before, the whole company worked with the effortless unanimity of a perfect piece ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... Ramy sat together in the forward part of the car, and Ann Eliza could catch only an occasional glimpse of the forget-me-not bonnet and the clock-maker's shiny coat-collar; but when the little party got out at their corner the crowd swept them together again, and they walked back in the effortless silence of tired children to the Bunner sisters' basement. As Miss Mellins and Mr. Ramy turned to go their various ways Evelina mustered a last display of smiles; but Ann Eliza crossed the threshold in silence, feeling the stillness of ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... for myself then,' said Hazel; and "for herself' was the way she liked best to sing. But if he wished it So without more ado the song came. Not one of her gay little carols this time, but a wild Border lament; inimitably sweet, tender, and true. As effortless in the giving, as forgetful of auditors, as if she had been a veritable bird among the branches; for Wych Hazel always ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... rather serious talk with you, Simon." From the effortless way in which she drew a heavy armchair into the position she desired, a shrewd observer might have gleaned a hint of the muscular strength that was her heritage from many a camp and ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... be vigorous, and the recovery almost effortless, were even the direction of both actually vertical. But they are vertical only with relation to the bird's body. In space they follow the forward flight, in a softly curved line; the downward stroke being as effective as the bird chooses, the recovery scarcely encounters ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... a loin cloth, the man was naked, his smooth skin tanned to a deep brown by the action of sun and wind. He moved with the graceful ease of a jungle cat and when he lifted heavy weights, the action seemed as effortless as the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the minute or two that he had spent in it, either still at the party which he had just left, or already at the party into which he was just about to be ushered, he now noticed, for the first time, roused by the unexpected arrival of so belated a guest, the scattered pack of splendid effortless animals, the enormous footmen who were drowsing here and there upon benches and chests, until, pointing their noble greyhound profiles, they towered upon their feet and gathered in a circle round ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... strange characters of the Zend, in the Sanscrit, in the effortless creed of Confucius, in the Aztec coloured-string writings and rayed stones, in the uncertain marks left of the sunken Polynesian continent, hieroglyphs as useless as those of Memphis, nothing. Nothing! They have been tried, and were found an illusion. Think then, to-day, now looking ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... the swinging stride was practised only by Mr. Bross; P. Sybarite, instinctively aware that any such mode of locomotion would ill become one of his inches, contented himself with keeping up—his gait an apparently effortless, tireless, and comfortable amble, congruent with bowed shoulders, bended head, introspective eyes, and his aspect in ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... calm of the body, calm of the mind, the heart and the soul; peace physical, intellectual and moral. In looking at the Hermes they saw, or seemed to themselves to see, the goal, what struggling humanity is meant for—the perfect poise, all faculties under effortless control, and so peace. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... to present him as a lover. He appears rather as the great fighter, the slayer of demons. Such a portrayal is what we might perhaps expect from a Mughal edition. None the less the paintings are remarkable interpretations, investing Krishna with an air of effortless composure, and exalting his princely grace. The style is notable for its use of smoothly flowing outlines and gentle shading, and although there is no direct connection, it is these characteristics which were later to be embodied in the Hindu art ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... stood for a broad freedom, and her revolt against the dependence in which she lived was pointed by his contempt for the dull, easy, effortless life of the big country house. Her mind swayed towards him as she thought of what he had to offer her in exchange—adventure in unknown lands; glory, perhaps not wholly reflected, for there had been ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... beauty in all things made by man. There is a close connexion between the idea of life expressed in Aristotle's ideal man and the later Greek sculpture. The aim of that sculpture, as of his ideal man, was proud and effortless perfection. Both dread the confession of failure above all things—and both are dull. In Aristotle's age art had started upon a long decline, which ended only when the pretence of perfection was killed, both in art and in life, by Christianity. Then the real beauty ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... really did regard himself as a masterful and dare-devil fellow, except when he was actually fighting. Similarly, except when he was at his work, Whistler, doubtless, really did think of himself as a brilliant effortless butterfly. The pose was, doubtless a quite sincere one, a necessary reaction of feeling. Well, in his writing he displays to us his vanity; whilst in his Painting we discern only his reverence. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Christians and to be manifested therein. There are three most significant and instructive symbols by which the unity of believers in Christ Jesus is set forth in the New Testament. Our Lord Himself gives us the one of the vine and its branches, and that symbol suggests the silent, effortless process by which the life-giving sap rises and finds its way from the deep root to the furthest tendril and the far-extended growth. The same symbol loses indeed in one respect its value if we transfer it to growths more congenial to our northern climate, and instead of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... and see the shore rush past and hear the roar of the falls in our ears, like some poor wretch caught in the glassy smoothness above Niagara, who has flung down the oars, and, clutching the gunwale with idle hands, sits effortless and breathless till the plunge comes. Many a despairing voice has prayed as the sands ran out, and joys fled, 'Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon,' but in vain. Once ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... cowboy, and Wung Lu waving his kitchen apron. In another moment he was beside the rider of the stallion, and the man was whistling one of those melodies which defied repetition. It simply ran on and on, smoothly, sweeping through transition after transition, soaring and falling in the most effortless manner. Now it paused, now it began again. It was never loud, but it carried like the music of a bird on wing, blown by the wind. There was about it, also, something which escaped from the personal. He began to forget that it was a man who whistled, and such ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... of society had been of farcical ease. Not her prospective millions nor her conquering loveliness, either of which might eventually have gained the entree for her, would have sufficed to set her on the throne. Shrewd social critics ascribed her effortless success to what Lord ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... countenance, with every muscle rippling grace and vigor to meet the proud volition, lithely cutting the air, swifter than the swallow's wing in its arrowy precision, careless as the floating flake in effortless motion, skimming along the lucid sheathing that answers his ringing heel with a tune of its own, and swaying in his almost aerial medium, lightly, easily, as the swimming fish sways to the currents ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... shadows Flung eastward from their feet in longer measure, Serenely far there swam in the sunny height A buzzard and his mate who took their pleasure Swirling and poising idly in golden light. On great pied motionless moth-wings borne along, So effortless and so strong, Cutting each other's paths, together they glided, Then wheeled asunder till they soared divided Two valleys' width (as though it were delight To part like this, being sure they could unite ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... he had promised Eileen to do what he could. What merit lay in performing an easy obligation? What courage was required to keep a promise easily kept? If he cared anything for her—if he really cared for Gerald, he owed them more than effortless fulfilment. And here there could be no fulfilment without effort, without the discarding from self of the last rags of pride. And even then, what hope was there—after the sacrifice of self and the ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... of racing, but I love the aspect of sleek, slim horses, and I could applaud a skill in which I had no share. I can keep my seat on most four-legged beasts, but my horsemanship is a clumsy, rough-and-ready affair, very different from the effortless grace of your true cavalier. Mr. Grey's prowess, especially, filled me with awe. He would leap an ugly fence without moving an inch in his saddle, and both in skill and the quality of his mounts he was an easy victor. The sight of such accomplishments depressed my pride, and ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... half-way across the lawn before he could stop her, her head thrown back, carrying herself proudly and well, moving as it seemed to him with a sort of effortless dignity wholly in keeping with the vigour of her words. He obeyed her literally. There was nothing else for him to do. His slight effort to join her in the cab she firmly repulsed, holding out her hand and speaking a few cheerful words of thanks for ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by which our visual sensations are disposed of in the right way before we obtain any knowledge of the eye. And most wisely has nature seconded her own scheme by obscuring all the sources from which that knowledge might be derived. The light eyelids—the effortless muscular apparatus performing its ministrations so gently as to be almost unfelt—the tactual sensations so imperceptible when the eye is left to its own motions, so keen when it is invaded by an exploring finger, and so anxious to avoid all contact by which the existence of the organ might ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... gravely remiss. The strain of giving herself so generously and whole-heartedly had worn upon the girl disastrously, and—she had had warning and hadn't heeded. Until recently, it is true, Elsie's blithe buoyancy had seemed always the normal, unconscious, almost effortless efflorescence of a lovely nature, as natural as playful grace to a kitten, as simple as breathing. But once or twice back in the fall, Miss Pritchard had been startled into wondering if the sweet instrument ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... it, you know. I am nothing," he said in his effortless strong voice, that seemed to come out as naturally as a river flows. He picked up the stump of the cigar he had laid aside, and added peacefully, with a slight nod, "As it happens, my life is necessary; it isn't my own, it ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... a low, warning whistle. Bill turned and looked, then quietly stopped the dogs. To the rear, from around the last bend and plainly into view, on the very trail they had just covered, trotted a furry, slinking form. Its nose was to the trail, and it trotted with a peculiar, sliding, effortless gait. When they halted, it halted, throwing up its head and regarding them steadily with nostrils that twitched as it caught and studied the ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... herself but simply a feeling of insecurity with regard to their future. He only realised in those moments how much he had leaned upon her, how completely she seemed to have extended over him and his troubled life some sort of sheltering influence, to which he had succumbed with an effortless, an almost fatalistic impulse, finding there, at any rate, a refuge from the horrors of his empty days. It was all abstract and impersonal at first, this jealousy which had come so suddenly to disturb the serenity ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his effortless play, in his superb mastery of the furious gale, one realized that here was one of Nature's masterpieces. He arrested the gaze with his serenity, and in his majesty of flight marked himself as ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... sort of excitement; and as a consequence to our obtaining a sense of real well-being only from the spare energy which accumulates during idleness. Moreover, under our present conditions (as under those of slave-labour) "work" is rarely such as calls forth the effortless, the willing, the pleased attention. Either in kind or length or intensity, work makes a greater demand than can be met by the spontaneous, happy activity of most of us, and thereby diminishes the future chances of such spontaneous activity ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... feeling is that the mistake is to consider it can only be done in one way. Each person has his own way; but I agree in thinking that the best art is the most effortless." ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wave, I laid me, fresh from a sea-bath, on the shore— And, failing not to put head foremost—for The hair holds the sea-water in its mesh— I rose in air, straight! straight! like angel's flight, And mounted, mounted, gently, effortless,. . . When lo! a sudden shock! ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... hostage. Let him not grow up in the court of the stranger, in the land of our foes. Let his feet, in his youth, climb the green holts of England;—let his eyes, resin dims them, drink the blue of her skies! When this shall reach thee, thou in thy calm, effortless strength, wilt be more great than Godwin our father. Power came to him with travail and through toil, the geld of craft and of force. Power is born to thee as strength to the strong man; it gathers around thee as thou movest; it is not thine aim, it is thy nature, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... effortless knack of commanding attention and inspiring courtesy. Calvin Gray was one of these. Before many moments, he was in the manager's office, explaining, suavely, "Now that I have introduced myself, I wish to thank you for taking care of ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... and screamed with laughter at Mabane's toast. The tragedy of a few hours ago seemed to have passed already from her mind. She was all charm and irresponsibility. The gaunt, bare room, which for years had mocked all our efforts at decoration, seemed suddenly a beautiful place. Easily, and with the effortless grace of her fifteen years, she laughed ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... myself borne up and up in that effortless ascension, my senses awake and my reason still half-dormant, an exquisite sense of languor pervaded my whole being. Presently meseemed that the surface was gained at last, and an instinct impelled me to open ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... as blade met blade, his sword, in the most effortless way, being edge outward exactly where Roy struck. "Why, do you know, sir, if I'd been in arnest with you, that you would have been spitted like a cockchafer on a pin before you got your blade round ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... traditional sculptural motive. Its treatment is beautifully educated and its effect refined, chaste, and elevated in an extraordinary degree. No master ever steered so near the reef of "clock-tops," one may say, and avoided it so surely and triumphantly. The figure is light as air and wholly effortless at the same time. There has rarely been such a distinguished success in circumventing the great difficulty of sculpture—which is to rob marble or metal of its specific gravity and make it appear light and buoyant, just as the difficulty of the painter is to ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... must remember that we are to a certain extent without that craving for amusement which makes these things necessary for you others. We are perhaps too serious in my country, Lady Grace. We lack altogether that delightful air of irresponsibility with which you Londoners seem to make your effortless way through life." ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with a confidence which is yet modest, and with a rightness that has nothing rigid or unamiable about it. To see a thing so done, whatever it may be, leaves us with an envious desire that we might do the thing in the same way. It seems easy and effortless, and the one thing worth doing; and this is where the moral appeal of beauty lies, in the contagious sort of example that it sets. But when we clumsily translate the word by "grace," we lose the root idea of the word, which has a ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... silent and lonely from shore to shore; the whole hot summer sky stretched just as silent and lonely from horizon to horizon; only the old ferryman, edging along the bank till he was far up stream, crossed the narrower tide and drifted down effortless on the other side; only an old black brig lay at anchor, with furled sail and silent deck, in the middle channel down below the piers, and from her festering and blistering hull it was that all the heat and loneliness and silence of the scene seemed to exude—for ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... for rhyme and rhythm both, when repeated to him a few times with scanning emphasis, took root in that fertile brain which piled his compact forehead so powerfully above his piercing, deep-set eyes, and fell from his infant lips in silvery melody as effortless and spontaneous as the trickling of water or the singing of birds in ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield |
