"Pirouette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carved overhanging roof, which you can look at with as much pleasure as an antique gem, so neat and brilliant is the execution of it; then, you come to the arched entrance to a mosque, which shoots up like—like what?—like the most beautiful pirouette by Taglioni, let us say. This architecture is not sublimely beautiful, perfect loveliness and calm, like that which was revealed to us at the Parthenon (and in comparison of which the Pantheon and Colosseum are vulgar and coarse, mere broad-shouldered ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... table, there bounded on to the stage from some mysterious inlet, a little girl in a dirty white frock with tucks up to the knees, short trousers, sandaled shoes, white spencer, pink gauze bonnet, green veil and curl papers; who turned a pirouette, cut twice in the air, turned another pirouette, then, looking off at the opposite wing, shrieked, bounded forward to within six inches of the footlights, and fell into a beautiful attitude of terror, as a shabby gentleman in an old pair of buff slippers came in ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... from the stage of her own accord. At the age of thirty she saw that she was growing somewhat stouter, and she had tried pantomime without success. Her whole art consisted in the trick of raising her skirts, after Noblet's manner, in a pirouette which inflated them balloon-fashion and exhibited the smallest possible quantity of clothing to the pit. The aged Vestris had told her at the very beginning that this temps, well executed by a fine woman, is worth all the art imaginable. It is the chest-note C of dancing. For which reason, he ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... with wide doors sliding upward, so that almost the whole of the lower floor could be made into one grand room. The floors were of hard wood, and polished to the last degree of brightness, and were, as Kitty McKenzie merrily remarked, while she executed a gay pirouette on entering, "just ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the sounds, swelling and subsiding through elaborate cadences, brought some solace to his heart. Then, with the elasticity of youth, he hurried off to play with the babies, or to design a new pigsty, or to read aloud the "Church History of Scotland" to Victoria, or to pirouette before her on one toe, like a ballet-dancer, with a fixed smile, to show her how she ought to behave when she appeared in public places. Thus did he amuse himself; but there was one distraction in which he did not indulge. He never flirted—no, not with the prettiest ladies of the Court. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... There are two empty pages that stare significantly. The empty pages are a lapse. It was during this lapse that Mallare smiled with interest at the spectacle of his disintegration. There follows, then, a sudden excited outburst, undated. In it the beginnings of his madness pirouette ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... the power of indicating our wishes, is the power of winning obedience to those wishes. These, and these only, are the two things to be aimed at, from the putting the first halter on the colt, to his performance of the pirouette renversee au galop—which is perhaps the most perfect trial and triumph of the most exquisitely finished horsemanship, and in which the horse must exert every faculty of his mind to discover, and every muscle of his body to execute, the ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... uttered? An allusion to ribbons! Is there some poisoned pin in them, which has been struck into my mother's heart by a guilty fiend of a London mantua-maker? I professed to wish to be led in these lovely reins all my life long," and he turned a pirouette on his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cried Polly, slipping out from under the doctor's palms, and seizing the two hands extended, she began to spin around as in the olden days, "did you ever, ever hear of anything so perfectly magnificent! But Ben and Joel and Davie!" and she paused on the edge of another pirouette. ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... dancing was in vogue, and I am afraid that pretty Mrs. Rylands's performances would now be voted slow. Her silk skirt and frilled petticoat were lifted just over her small ankles and tiny bronze-kid shoes. In the course of a pirouette or two, there was a slight further revelation of blue silk stockings and some delicate embroidery, but really nothing more than may be seen in the sweep of a modern waltz. Suddenly the music ceased. Mr. Rylands had left the harmonium and walked over to the hearth. Mrs. Rylands stopped, and ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... extending his hand, 'you must allow me to express my admiration! I wish other young ladies were so thoughtful and prudent. But if they were, it would not make your conduct less remarkable.' And Mr. Morton departed, while Wych Hazel, turning a sharp pirouette on one toe, dropped into her chair like a thistle down. But all that appeared to the eyes of Mr. Dell was a somewhat extensive flutter of muslin. He had no time to remark upon it nor upon anything else, as there immediately succeeded ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... and attached himself firmly to Madam Anderson's train, and beginning a swift rotary movement, so bewildered the old lady that she lost both oar and enemy, and looked more like a pirouette dancer than a decorous upholder of the cause of individual freedom ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... turns a pirouette, the violinist who plays a sonata, have acquired their dexterity by patient repetition and after many failures. Carissimi, when praised for the ease and grace of his melodies, exclaimed, "Ah! you little know with what difficulty this ease has been acquired." Sir Joshua Reynolds, when once ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... with Senor Pasta, and Senor Pasta had left him stupefied and confused, after advising him to do a million contradictory and impossible things. He had consulted with Pepay the dancing girl, and Pepay, who had no idea what he was talking about, executed a pirouette and asked him for twenty-five pesos to bury an aunt of hers who had suddenly died for the fifth time, or the fifth aunt who had suddenly died, according to fuller explanations, at the same time requesting that he get a cousin of hers ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... cock-pit was his constant haunt, and in more senses than one was he a leg. No opera-dancer could be more agile, more nimble; scarcely, indeed, more graceful, than was Jerry, with his shoeless and stockingless feet; and the manner in which he executed a pirouette, or a pas, before a line of carriages, seldom failed to procure him "golden opinions from all sorts of dames." With the ladies, it must be owned, Jerry was rather upon too easy terms; but then, perhaps, the ladies were upon too easy terms with Jerry; and if a bright-eyed fair one condescended ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... mind to allow her cavalier to be made a horse-block of for anybody but herself. She jerked the bridle, and making her horse suddenly pirouette, compelled Louise to jump down. The mischievous little fairy turned her bright laughing eyes full upon La Force and thanked him for his great courtesy, and with a significant gesture—as much as to say he was at liberty now to escort Angelique, having done penance for the same—rejoined ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... retreated, with such bending and twisting as would turn a ballet-master mad with envy. In all the movement of the overture the two dancers merely touched the tips of each other's fingers, and when the solemn measure came to a close the President slid across the floor in one graceful, immense pirouette, handing the lady who confronted him, bent nearly to the ground, into her seat. There was an outburst of applause, and then the assembly took places, repeating, in as far as the mass would permit, the stately ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the dancer's existence with the stupidity of her still-life poses. She longed to run and pirouette and leap into the air. She wished she could kick herself in the back of the head to music the way ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... oxygen and appropriating it, the vivifying gas cannot penetrate to the centre of the film. In the middle, therefore, the bacteria die, while their peripheral colleagues continue active. If a bubble of air chance to be enclosed in the film, round it the bacteria will pirouette and wabble until its oxygen has been absorbed, after which all their motions cease. Precisely the reverse of all this occurs with the vibrios of butyric acid. In their case it is the peripheral organisms that are first killed, the central ones remaining vigorous while ringed by a zone of dead. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... at every blow. These failing to delight her, dancers appear. Four first; then two; THE two; the flesh-coloured two. The way in which they dance; the height to which they spring; the impossible and inhuman extent to which they pirouette; the revelation of their preposterous legs; the coming down with a pause, on the very tips of their toes, when the music requires it; the gentleman's retiring up, when it is the lady's turn; and the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... will she do about that?" cried Alexia, rushing on in her complaint. "Perhaps she'll give it up, after all," she added, brightening. "Now I most know she will, Mrs. Fisher," and she started up and began to pirouette around the room. ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... that's fine!" repeated Miss Martin, on hearing his answer. "Say, we must dance a FRANCAISE. Mr. Guest, you an' I'll be partners, I surmise," and ceasing to waltz and pirouette with James, she took a long sweep, then stood steady, and let her skates bear her out to the middle of the pond. Her skirts clung close in front, and swept out behind her lithe figure, until it was lost in ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... old lady who had lived in the Rue Pirouette for forty years. She never spoke about herself, but she spent her life in getting information about her neighbours, carrying her prying curiosity so far as to listen behind their doors and open their ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... Mr. Roundjacket executed a pirouette upon his rheumatic leg, which caused him to fall back in his chair, making the most extraordinary faces, which we can compare to nothing but the contortions of a child who bites ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... storm and glare of the ballet, the last appearance of that small, incarnate genius of Folly. There were other dancers, but he saw none but her. He knew every pose and movement of her body, from her first tentative, preluding pirouette, to her last moon-struck dance, when she tossed her tall grenadier's cap to the back of the stage, and still spinning, shook out her hair, and flung herself backwards, till it streamed and eddied with ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the shadows on the mountain Pirouette with one another See the leaf upon the fountain Dances with its leaflet brother See the moonlight on the earth Flecking forest gleam and glance! What are all these dancings worth ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce |
