"Sportive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... madwoman, who was the mistress of the house, has become the servant. Look around you, Senor Penitentiary, and you will see the admirable aggregation of truths which has taken the place of fable. The sky is not a vault; the stars are not little lamps; the moon is not a sportive huntress, but an opaque mass of stone; the sun is not a gayly adorned and vagabond charioteer but a fixed fire; Scylla and Charybdis are not nymphs but sunken rocks; the sirens are seals; and in the ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... I will begin in my usual rockety style, sometimes maliciously called the Pollyoliver method; Margery will take up the thread sedately; Bell will plunge in with a burst of enthusiasm and seventeen adjectives, followed by a verse of poor poetry; Geoff will do the sportive or instructive, just as he happens to feel; and Phil will wind up the letter by some practical details which will serve as a key to all the rest. Won't it be a box of literary bonbons for her to read in bed, poor darling! ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... would be to protest its irresponsible infancy, and admit that it was a more or less amiable blatancy in individuals, and not art at all. Young animals often gambol in a delightful fashion, and men also may, though hardly when they intend to do so. Sportive self-expression can be prized because human nature contains a certain elasticity and margin for experiment, in which waste activity is inevitable and may be precious: for this license may lead, amid a thousand failures, to some real discovery and advance. Art, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... and while the blue waves of the Chesapeake rolled in murmuring music by, or, lashed by the ocean wind, heaved in foaming billows, roaring against the walls, I yielded myself to the wizard spell of genius and passion. The officers as they passed would try to break the enchantment by gay and sportive words, but all in vain. I have sat there, drenched by the salt sea-spray, and knew it not. I was called the little bookworm, the prodigy, the dream-girl, a name you have inherited, my darling Gabriella; and my father seemed ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the accession of men who have neither, are signs visible to the dullest apprehension. The once national sport of horse-racing is being degraded to a trade in which it is difficult to perceive anything either sportive or national. The old pretence about the improvement of the breed of horses has become a ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... me o'er thy babbling stream And watch thy current, Memory's hand pourtrays The faint form'd scenes of the departed days, Like the far forest by the moon's pale beam Dimly descried yet lovely. I have worn Upon thy banks the live-long hour away, When sportive Childhood wantoned thro' the day, Joy'd at the opening splendour of the morn, Or as the twilight darken'd, heaved the sigh Thinking of distant home; as down my cheek At the fond thought slow stealing on, would speak The silent eloquence of the full eye. Dim are the long ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... a sportive mood, performs some wonderful acrobatic feats with human nature; gives love of oriental luxury to the woman with nothing a year; appreciation of all that is beautiful and artistic, to the ploughman; an epicurian taste to the starving mechanic; ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt
... country was new, and neighbors were farther apart and more friendly; while the young people, happy as a flock of birds in the sunny days of mate-choosing, and freshly blooming as the landscape—around them, were out on the mown field adjacent to the house, whirling in the sportive ring, bounding in the merry dance, chatting in agreeable groups, or chasing one another on flying feet to exact or administer some little forfeit, or whisper ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... moment, as luck had it, the oratory came to a sudden end. A sportive bull-pup, malevolently released by some one in the crowd, danced up to the horse-block, barking joyfully, and made a lightning dive for the spellbinder's legs. The spellbinder dexterously side-stepped; the dog's aim was diverted from that ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... settled himself upon a divan near Madame, with all the complacency of a man whose own foresight has saved him a serious trouble, and said after mature deliberation, gazing thoughtfully at the sportive cherubs ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... obtained an introduction to the earl within the last half-hour, and had not concealed his admiration for the earl's daughter. He had entreated the honor of a formal introduction to the exquisite creature with whom he had conversed on sportive terms last night ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... that know nothing of the warm attachments of refined society? Here the dead was raised to his long-cherished hopes, and the lost was found. Here all doubt and danger were buried in the vortex of oblivion; sectional differences no longer disunited their opinions; like the freed bird from the cage, sportive claps its rustling wings, wheels about to heaven in a joyful strain, and raises its notes to the upper sky. Ambulinia insisted upon Elfonzo to be seated, and give her a history of his unnecessary ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... affairs. The day was two hours older, and a sunbeam that had pointed at them through the diamond-paned window had travelled away and vanished. The day was darker outside, and it was as though spring had lost her sportive mood and then withdrawn, not wishing to hear the tale that Adams had ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... on the water was planned for the morning, and Edward and Fanny were wakened from their slumbers by the tones of the bugle; a soft Irish melody being breathed by Spillan, followed by a more sportive one from the other minstrel of the ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... awkward. He had a constitutional melancholy, the clouds of which darkened the brightness of his fancy, and gave a gloomy cast to his whole course of thinking: yet, though grave and awful in his deportment, when he thought it necessary or proper, he frequently indulged himself in pleasantry and sportive sallies. He was prone to superstition, but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to a belief of the marvellous, and the mysterious, his vigorous reason examined the evidence with jealousy. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... his snug bed he gathered the waste-basket into his arms and commenced to dig in it like a sportive terrier. After a messy minute or two he successfully excavated the crumpled little gray tissue circular and smoothed it out carefully on his humped-up knees. The expression in his eyes all the time was quite a curious mixture of ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the sportive prelude of more serious trouble. Nunquam imprudentibus imber incidit: as the servant perhaps reflected, who, on Monday, January 29th, was conveying the dinner of his master's family from the Hotel kitchen to Cambrian Terrace. As he crossed the gusty street between them, the harpies of the storm ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... simple prayer, in an artless letter[4120]. None of the gifts which serve to arrest and fix the attention are wanting in this style, neither grandeur of imagination nor profound sentiment, vivid characterization, delicate gradations, vigorous precision, a sportive grace, unlooked-for burlesque, nor variety of representation. But, amidst so many ingenious tricks, apologues, tales, portraits and dialogues, in earnest as well as when masquerading, his deportment throughout is irreproachable and his tone is perfect. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... stooped in sportive mood To Syracusan strains, nor blushed within The woods to house her. When I sought to tell Of battles and of kings, the Cynthian god Plucked at mine ear and warned me: "Tityrus, Beseems a shepherd-wight to feed fat sheep, ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... solemnity upon his withered countenance; the night was very windy, and every instant a rapid current seized the unhappy sea-green vesture, whirled it in the air, and threw it, as if in scorn, over the very face of the miserable professor. The constant recurrence of this sportive irreverence of the gales—the high sides of the basket, and the trembling agitation of the inmate, never too agile, rendered it a work of some time for Monsieur Margot to transfer himself from the basket to the ladder; at length, he had fairly got ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... memories of squalor, filth, hunger, wretchedness, dull toil, unspeakable misery. Take it at its best, and consider what a modern engagement really means. Recollect, moreover, that I am about to use sentences accurate as a photograph. The sportive Pressman says, "Vernon began to find the enemy's cloud of sharp-shooters troublesome, so the 5th sought better cover on the right, leaving Brown free to develop his artillery fire." "Troublesome!" Translate that word, and it means ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the sportive shears, Fair nature mis-adorning, there were found: Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers, With sprouting urns and budding statues crowned; And horizontal dials on the ground, In living box by cunning artists traced; And gallies trim, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... warm, Fold us on a dove-like breast,— Not to love, but love's bestowing Gentle care and kiss are owing:— Is the passion changed or cloyed, Doth the giver's light grow less? Banished from the sweet recess, Sportive pressure, fond caress, See ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... in him of barren imagination, the absence from it of the spiritual, nothing in him which as yet desires, through the sorrow and strife of life, God's infinitude, or man's love; a natural life indeed, forgiveable, gay, sportive, dowered with happy self-love, good to pass through and enjoy, but better to leave behind. But Sordello will not become the actual artist till he lose his self-involvement and find his soul, not only in love of his Daphne but in love of man. And the first thing he will have to do is that which ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... throat; for it was there that the results of the duchess' indiscretion finally worked themselves out to their unexpected, fatal, and momentous ending. Seldom, as I should suppose, has such a mixed skein of good and evil, of fatality and happiness, been spun from material no more substantial than a sportive lady's idle freak. ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... in the flowering limes Had laid her down at ease, Lulled by soft, sportive winds, whose tinkling chimes Summoned the wandering bees To feast, and dance, and hold high carnival Within that vast and ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... the finest imagination, the most delicate taste, the sweetest feeling, and the rarest artistic skill—in a word, a sculptor and a poet too—could have first dreamed of a Faun in this guise, and then have succeeded in imprisoning the sportive and frisky thing in marble. Neither man nor animal, and yet no monster, but a being in whom both races meet on friendly ground. The idea grows coarse as we handle it, and hardens in our grasp. But, if the spectator broods long over the statue, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gentle sir, if they desire to war, Why should we hinder such a sportive game? They own those isles, and why should we debar Them pastimes, for "they know just ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... Adrian, his visor down, rode slowly into the green space, amidst the cheers of his party. The two Knights, at either end, gravely fronted each other; they made the courtesies with their lances, which, in friendly and sportive encounters, were customary; and, as they thus paused for the signal of encounter, the Italians trembled for the honour of their chief: Montreal's stately height and girth of chest forming a strong contrast, even in armour, to the form of his opponent, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and ballads which were called forth by passing events were usually amorous, sportive, gay, and often gross, yet suited to a ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... and biographer of the eminent American judge, Joseph Story, relates of him[236]—"To dumb creatures he was kind and considerate, and indignant at any ill usage of them. His sportive nature showed itself in the nicknames which, in parody of the American fondness of titles, he gave to his horses and dogs, as, 'The Right Honourable Mr Mouse,' or ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... this boy to go and play there. And of course he's going. And he had better play there," said my sister, shaking her head at me as an encouragement to be extremely light and sportive, "or ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... in the cradle; two or three of the other little ones, weary with their sportive play, had been laid in their cribs. Henric and Lewis, two lovely boys of five and six years old, having promised to be very good, if allowed to sit up till their father's return, were watching their mother, who was employed in roasting a fine fat quail which their cousin, Lalotte, who had arrived ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... in accents low, The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glittering female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display: On hasty wings thy youth is flown; Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone— We ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the sportive variability of these weekly, daily, or hourly speculators, shall I be pardoned, if I attempt a word on the part of us simple country folk? It is not good for us, however it may be so for great statesmen, that we should be treated with variable politics. I consider different relations ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... He was the son of my wife's sister; therefore my relation only by marriage. He was certainly the most extraordinary child I ever beheld. I cannot recollect him but with inconceivable emotions of affection. Of all the sportive little creatures I ever met with, he was the most active, the most undaunted, and the most winning. Heaven bless the sweet boy! He was my delight. My eyes overflow whenever I recall to mind the feats of his childhood, which can never ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... other in endless races over the whole expanse. I have seen them run breathlessly up the long slope, and then suddenly turn and rush pell-mell down again. If the wind had only stopped for a moment its endless gossip with the leaves, I am sure I should have heard the gleeful shouts, the sportive cries, of these vagrant flowers whose spell is rewoven over every generation of children, and whose unstudied beauty and joy recall, with every summer, some of the clews which most of us have lost in our journey through life. Even as I write, I see the white and yellow heads tossing to and fro in ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... ne'er did Grecian chisel trace A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace, Of finer form or lovelier face! What though the sun, with ardent frown, Had slightly tinged her cheek with brown,— The sportive toil, which, short and light Had dyed her glowing hue so bright, Served too in hastier swell to show Short glimpses of a breast of snow: What though no rule of courtly grace To measured mood had trained her pace,— A foot more light, a step more true, Ne'er from the heath-flower dashed the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... assiduity almost incredible; and, that since his death, the integrity of his character has been fully vindicated. Being himself a poet, Johnson was peculiarly happy in mentioning how many of the sons of Pembroke were poets; adding, with a smile of sportive triumph, 'Sir, we are a nest of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the interlocutors, and understand thoroughly all their minutest relations, and points of common knowledge and common feeling with each other. He who does not, must be perpetually in danger of misinterpreting sportive allusion into serious statement; and the man who was only recalling, by some jocular phrase or half-phrase, to an old companion, some trivial reminiscence of their boyhood or youth, may be represented as expressing, upon some person or incident casually tabled, an opinion ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... by Patricia Whipple. Down one side of River Street to its last shop, and up the other, they progressed haltingly. At many of the windows the capitalist displayed interest only of the most academic character. At others he made sportive threats. Thus before the jewellery shop of Rapp Brothers he quite unnerved Merle by announcing that he could buy everything in that window if he wanted to—necklaces and rings and pins and gold watches—and he might do this. If, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... the nymphs Thither assembled, thither every swain; And o'er the dimpled stream a thousand flowers, Pale lilies, roses, violets and pinks, Mix'd with the greens of bouret, mint, and thyme, And trefoil, sprinkled with their sportive arms, Such custom holds along th' irriguous vales, From Wreken's brow to rocky Dolvoryn, Sabrina's ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... up, I replied with improbable tales of Indian life, of rajahs and diamonds, of panthers whose eyes shine like moonbeams in the dark jungle, of elephants huge as battleships, of sportive monkeys who tie knots in each others' tails and build themselves huts among the trees, where they brew iced lemonade, which they offer in friendliest fashion to the thirsty wayfarer, together with ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... fellow-creatures. I often think of them. What were they now doing? Taking themselves seriously and rushing about, as usual, haggard and careworn—like those sagacious ants that scurry hither and thither, and stare into each other's faces with a kind of desperate imbecility, when some sportive schoolboy has kicked their ridiculous nest into the air and upset all ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... and conscience, vaguely hoping thereby to bamboozle somebody besides themselves—perhaps the recording angel. So, this morning, he hunted up the other children, as his mother had bidden him, and made a manful—nay, desperate—effort to be sportive at home; but the little fort, within the shelter of whose wooden walls had been their home ever since that melancholy night two years ago, had never seemed to him so dull and lonesome. The hunters and field-laborers, belonging to the station, were all abroad, and the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... tender woe sad memory woos back time, And paints the scenes when youth was in its prime; The craggy hill, where rocks, with wild flow'rs crown'd, Burst from the hazle copse or verdant ground; Where sportive nature every form assumes, And, gaily lavish, wastes a thousand blooms; Where oft we heard the echoing hills repeat Our untaught strains and rural ditties sweet, Till purpling clouds proclaimed the closing day, While distant streams detain'd the parting ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... A sportive contest arose among the maidens, as to the comparative beauty of the Spanish and Moorish forms; but the Mauritanian damsel revealed limbs of voluptuous symmetry that seemed ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Looks cheerful, when one carries in one's heart The unalienable treasure. 'Tis a game, Which, having once reviewed, I turn more joyous Back to my deeper and appropriate bliss. [Breaking off, and in a sportive tone. In this short time that I've been present here. What new unheard-of things have I not seen; And yet they all must give place to the wond ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Britons, then, Your sportive fury, pitiless to pour Loose on the nightly robber of the fold. Him from his craggy winding haunts unearth'd, Let all the thunder ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... whose harmless play Beguiles the rustic's closing day, When drawn the evening fire about, Sit aged crone and thoughtless lout; Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces. Backward coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe. The house wife's, spindle whirling round, Or thread, or straw, that on the ground Its shadow throws, by urchin sly, Held out to lure thy roving eye. Then, onward ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... is, I think, the result of that active but melancholy Fancy, which can travel far into views of Life and Nature from a slight occasion. It has a mixture of the Sportive which deepens the impression of it's melancholy Close. I could have wish'd, as I have said in a short Note, the Conclusion had been otherwise. The sours of Life less offend my Taste than its sweets delight it. But when I think ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... so much solicitude as the human mind can never do comfortably without. She did—almost always—believe that Henry loved her, and quite always that his father and sister loved and even wished her to belong to them; and believing so far, her doubts and anxieties were merely sportive irritations. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... lonely, wild, Where seal, 'mid icebergs, sportive play, Far westward wander'd nature's child, And ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... development, the dress, manners, customs, and languages of the throng. It would be impossible to convey an idea of the ceaseless Babel of noise which prevails;—the cries designating certain goods, the bartering going on in shrill voices, the laughter mingled with sportive exclamations, and the frequent disputes which fill the air. But there is no actual quarrelling; the Russian police are too vigilant, too much feared, too summary for that. Open violence is instantly suppressed, and woe ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... the sportive fablings of the young white gentleman from up North who was visiting the Enders family, he had found a clue to what he sought. The difficult point, though, was to evolve the plan for the plot nebulously floating about in his brain; for while he envisaged the delectable outcome, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... life. The viscount was too young to be not merely a lover and tender husband, but also a sober counsellor and cautious instructor in the difficult after-day of life; and Josephine was too innocent, too artless, too sportive and genial, to avoid all those things that might give to the watchful and hostile family of her husband an opportunity for ill-natured suspicions, which were whispered in the viscount's ear as cruel certainties. It may readily be conceived, then, that such a state of things soon led to ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... two went together in glowing August weather, The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right; And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight. ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... from all this that Channing was not a genial person, and he was not. He was too intent upon the subjects that occupied his mind for that varied and sportive talk, that abandon, that sympathetic adjustment of his thoughts to the moods of people around him, which makes the agreeable person. His thoughts [57] moved in solid battalions, but they carried keen weapons. It would have been better for him if he had had more ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... minute later it was on its flank, with all four legs stretched out, and its muzzle in the snow; and all these changes were made with the most extreme deliberation, and as if the animal was intent only upon its own enjoyment, and was as sportive as the unwieldy fat calves rolling about near their mothers ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... sea, Bounding and free, O soothe me to sleep with thy sweet lullaby! As when a child, Sportive and wild, Thy waves and I gamboll'd, ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... the sea murmured as they turned to rejoin the revellers, and that sportive kiss was borne away on ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... us hear the whole tale of the alleged misdeeds. Of the second edition of The Passionate Pilgrim no copy exists. Nothing whatever is known of it, and the whole edition may have been but an ideal construction of Jaggard's sportive fancy. But in 1612 appeared The Passionate Pilgrime, or certaine amorous Sonnets between Venus and Adonis, newly corrected and augmented. By W. Shakespeare. The third edition. Whereunto is newly added two Love Epistles, the first from Paris to Hellen, and Hellen's answere back again ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... see, that wave was started when you stepped into the river for your little sportive paddle. It kept growing bigger all the time as it rolled down the stream, till it nigh swamped the old fisherman. I'm almost afraid to hear what calamity may have happened to some of ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... will find me Italian in faithfulness and memory. While writing the name of "Eugenie," my thoughts have often led me back to that cool stuccoed salon and little garden in the Vicolo dei Cappucini, which echoed to the laughter of that dear child, to our sportive quarrels and our chatter. But you have left the Corso for the Tre Monasteri, and I know not how you are placed there; consequently, I am forced to think of you, not among the charming things with which no doubt you have surrounded yourself, but like one of those fine figures due to Raffaelle, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... person than the Rev. Josiah Meek, B.A., (St. Christopher's Coll., Oxon.) - who, for the last three months, has officiated as Mr. Larkyns's curate. He appears to be of a peace-loving, lamb-like disposition; and, though sportive as a lamb when occasion requires, is yet of timid ways and manners. He is timid, too, in voice, - speaking in a feeble treble; he is timid, too, in his address, - more particularly as regards females; and he has mild-looking whiskers, that are ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... I moved upon the rolling seas, Or sank on Nature's flowery lap to rest, Or raised my light wings on the sportive breeze, The conscious earth with joy her god confess'd. While Mirth and Gladness round my footsteps play'd, And bright-haired Hope led on the laughing Hours. As man and beast in holy union stray'd To share the lucid streams and ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... the feverish excitement of the performance and the place; when they returned from an excursion to the country, laden with a long day's sunshine, intoxicated with the blue sky and the pure air, excited by the wine imbibed at dinner, amid the sportive liberties in which the woman of the people, drunk with enjoyment and with the delights of unlimited good cheer, and with the senses keyed up to the highest pitch of joviality, makes bold to indulge ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... history from which it was possible to extricate only the most ridiculous of facts, chief among them the reiterated assurance that her own father had been, in the bosom of his family, of a delightfully sportive nature, but nothing like the Westfalls—dear no!—that he had a genteel figure, my dear, for all he had developed a somewhat corpulent tendency in later years; that the corn-beef which mother procured ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... gave no hint where, hidden well, Her dainty form might warmly dwell, - A pearl within too large a shell. So quaint, so short, so lissome, she, It seemed as if it well might be Some jocose god, with sportive whirl, Had taken up a long lithe girl And tied a graceful knot in her. I tried to speak, and found, oh, bliss! I needed no interpreter; I knew the Japanese for kiss, - I had no other thought but this; And she, with smile ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... King and Queen were banquetting at Westminster, at Whitsuntide, 1317, a masked lady rode into the hall on horseback, and delivered a letter to the King. Imagining it to be some sportive challenge or gay compliment, he ordered that it should be read aloud; but it proved to be a direful lamentation over the state of England, and an appeal to him to rouse himself from his pleasures and attend to the good of his people. The bearer was at once pursued and seized, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the illustrations, special notice is to be taken. These, notwithstanding their oddity, extravagance, and burlesqueness, by reason of their grace, finish, and good taste, frequently get into the proximity of the fine arts. This elevation of sportive drawing is mainly to be put to the credit of manly John Leech,—"the very Dickens of the pencil." He and his associates have proved that the humorous side of things may be limned with mirth-provoking truth, and that vices and follies may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... doth cry. Nor less AEneas with his threat defies, "Stand off," he shouts, "who ventures to draw nigh, His town shall perish, and himself shall die." Onward, though maimed, he presses to his prey. Twice five times circling round the field they fly; For no mean stake or sportive prize they play, Lo, Turnus' life and blood ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... Luniot-Ganne, commemorated their union, kept for many years on the walls, the panels of the doors, and on odd cabinets and bits of furniture, souvenirs of the passage of all these men, in the shape of sketches made by their hands. This little museum, created in sportive mood, bore all these names and many more, those of men, often celebrated, who from sympathy or curiosity visited the place. Millet was in life, as in art, somewhat apart in the later years; but he was the consistent friend of Rousseau, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... that he should have his wish for another achievement that night, one that would please the sportive fancy now so strong in him. After recrossing the river he saw on his left an opening of considerable size, and he heard grunts and groans coming from it. He knew that a buffalo troop was resting there. The foolish beasts had wandered into the Indian vicinity, but ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... when ashore an infant stands, And draws imagined houses on the sands, The sportive wanton, pleased with some new play, Sweeps the slight works and fancied domes away: Thus vanish at thy touch the tow'rs and walls, The toil of mornings in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... here, we know how she has worked away for her old cinder and her small Rosebud, don't we?" she added, playfully squeezing the child's cheeks up into a more budding look, hiding deeper and more overcoming feelings by the sportive action. And as her sister came back, she looked up and shook her ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is fond to find amusement even in a serious subject, from the scenes of nocturnal imagination, will be glad, perhaps for a moment, to be transported into the regions of poetic fancy. And here we find that the fancy is not more sportive in dreams, than are the poets in their descriptions of her nocturnal vagaries. On the effects of the imagination in dreams, the following effusion, put into the mouth of the volatile Mercurio, is an ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... of the dog instantly whistled, and the sportive animal ran to him; but Lady Bassett was a good deal scared, and went in holding her hand to her side. Mary Wells hurried to her assistance, and she cried a little from nervousness when the young woman ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Dover lights almost from Calais harbor. But we had considerably more than a capful of wind, and there was a turgent ground-swell on, which made our boat—double-engined, and as trim and tidy a craft as ever sped across the span from shore to shore—behave rather lively, with sportive indulgence in a brisk game of pitch-and-toss that proved anything but comfortable to most ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... New Atlantis.] will be a thing realised, and it will be humming with this business. Every university in the world will be urgently working for priority in this aspect of the problem or that. Reports of experiments, as full and as prompt as the telegraphic reports of cricket in our more sportive atmosphere, will go about the world. All this will be passing, as it were, behind the act drop of our first experience, behind this first picture of the urbanised Urseren valley. The literature of the subject will be growing and developing with the easy swiftness ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... thus, side by side, one of them struck its beak several times against the beak of the other, as if in play. I wished them joy of their expected progeny, and was the more ready to believe they would have it for this little display of sportive sentimentality. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... these. In short, I gave myself up to fantastic comparisons. A little book which I have says the same kind of thing in a variety of ways. For instance, it says that one may have many, many fancies, my Barbara—that as soon as the spring comes on, one's thoughts become uniformly pleasant and sportive and witty, for the reason that, at that season, the mind inclines readily to tenderness, and the world takes on a more roseate hue. From that little book of mine I have culled the following passage, and written it down for you to see. In particular does the author express a longing similar ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... o'er the surface creep those lustres pale Tracking the motions of the fitful gale. [90] With restless interchange at once the bright Wins on the shade, the shade upon the light. No favoured eye was e'er allowed to gaze 300 On lovelier spectacle in faery days; When gentle Spirits urged a sportive chase, Brushing with lucid wands the water's face; While music, stealing round the glimmering deeps, Charmed the tall circle of the enchanted steeps. 305 —The lights are vanished from the watery plains: No wreck of all the pageantry ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... brothers were slowly trudging along, Thumbling scampered up and down the road like a wild thing, running backwards and forwards like a sportive dog, spying here, there, and everywhere, and noticing everything that was to be noticed. Nothing was too small for his sharp little eyes, and he kept constantly stopping his brothers to ask the why and the wherefore of everything: ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... delight of that Emperor and his friend Maecenas. Bathyllus, of Alexandria, was the first to introduce it to the Roman public, but he had a dangerous rival in Pylades. The latter was magnificent, pathetic, and affecting, while Bathyllus was gay and sportive. All Rome was split into factions about their respective merits. Athenaeus speaks of a distinguished performer of his own time (he died A.D. 194) named Memphis, whom he calls the "dancing philosopher," because he showed what the Pythagorean ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... is a fair target for ridicule. The heaviest charge brought against American humour is that it never keeps its target well in view. We laugh, but we are not purged by laughter of our follies; we jest, but our jests are apt to have a kitten's sportive irresponsibility. The lawyer offers a witticism in place of an argument, the diner-out tells an amusing story in lieu of conversation. Even the clergyman does not disdain a joke, heedless of Dr. Johnson's warning ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... character. Adorni himself foamed at the mouth with rage, impotent for the present, but which he prepared to give deadly effect to at the proper time. But, whilst it laughed, Klosterheim also trembled. Some persons, indeed, were of opinion that the answer of The Masque was a mere sportive effusion of malice or pleasantry from the students, who had suffered so much by his annoyances. But the majority, amongst whom was Adorni himself, thought otherwise. Apart even from the reply, or the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Lippo, by your leave! You need not clap your torches to my face. Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk! What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds, And here you catch me at an alley's end Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar? The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up, Do—harry out, if you must show your zeal, Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole, And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, 10 , , that's crept to keep him company! Aha, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... upon a stick transverse, Receives the morsel: flesh obscene of hog, Or vermin; or, at best, of cock purloined From his accustom'd perch. Hard faring race, They pick their fuel out of every hedge, Which kindled with dry leaves, and wood, just saves The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawney skin, The vellum ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... to be vile than vile esteem'd, When not to be receives reproach of being; And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem'd Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing: For why should others' false adulterate eyes Give salutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, Which in their wills count bad what I think good? No, I am that I am, and they that level At my abuses reckon up their own: I may be straight though they themselves be bevel; By their rank thoughts, ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... to the literature of his country. As author of "The Lay Preacher," And as first editor of the Port Folio, He contributed to chasten the morals, and to Refine the taste of this nation. To an imagination lively, not licentious, A wit sportive, not wanton, And a heart without guile, he United a deep sensibility, which endeared Him to his friends, and an ardent piety, Which we humbly trust recommended him to his God. Those friends have erected this tribute of their Affection to his memory; To the mercies of that ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... determine if I need abbreviate this blissful moment, I saw the enraged animal disappearing in the side-door of the barn; and it was a nice, comfortable Durham cow, that somewhat rare but possible thing—a sportive cow. ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... none in that sense a few moments ago, but all my theories are falling to the ground. Forbear though, Miss Bailey," he said with a sudden air of sportive mystery, "you cannot afford to ruin your chances of success for the sake of a merely ornamental gift. You play the grande dame so well, that you are sure to reap the penalty of it. Forbear, I warn you, before it is too late. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... some three hours from his setting. The sphere that ever is sportive like a child has been variously interpreted; perhaps Dante only meant the sphere of the heavens which by its ever varying aspect suggests the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... thrill is in my blood! Here could I spend whole hours, delaying: Here Nature shaped, as if in sportive playing, The angel blossom from the bud. Here lay the child, with Life's warm essence The tender bosom filled and fair, And here was wrought, through holier, purer presence, The form ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... him to see he had never worked. There was something too roguish and wanton in his face, a look too like that of a schoolboy or a street Arab, to have survived much cudgeling. It was plain that these feet had kicked off sportive children oftener than they had plodded with freight through miry lanes. He was altogether a fine-weather, holiday sort of a donkey; and though he was just then somewhat solemnized and rueful, he still gave proof ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... nonsense-words! And then what a happiness would it have been, could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children! But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child comprehended her loneliness; ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wake thy silent lyre Our British Muse, our charming Seward, deigns!— With more harmonious tones, more sportive fire Beneath her ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... and easy, and, on proper occasions, pointed and energetic. His narratives were always amusing, his descriptions always picturesque, his humour rich and joyous, yet not without an occasional tinge of amiable sadness. About everything that he wrote, serious or sportive, there was a certain natural grace and decorum, hardly to be expected from a man a great part of whose life had been passed among thieves and beggars, street-walkers and merry andrews, in those squalid dens which are ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... does the latter hypothesis become when we take into consideration the frequent tricks played by sportive denizens of the other world, against which the untrained person is usually absolutely defenceless. It must also be remembered that the regular inhabitant of the astral plane, whether he be human or elemental, is under ordinary circumstances conscious only of the ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... marks the conquest of the West, A citadel sprung out the forest wild, A mecca where the pilgrims quietly rest: Each dame's content—content each sportive child; The fiery redmen nevermore revile, Nor haunt the footprints of thy daring sons, Whose noble spheres are widening all the while, Like as some brilliant star its orbit runs And sheds on earth its light down ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... more rejoice That yet a remnant of your race survives. How airy and how light the graceful arch, Yet awful as the consecrated roof Re-echoing pious anthems! while beneath, The chequered earth seems restless as a flood Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the light Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance, Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick, And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves Play wanton, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... the solemn truth, both unintentionally and of malice aforethought. It was his common practice to put a straw into Lord Palmerston's mouth. Palmerston, of course, never did chew straws; but one was adopted as a symbol to show his cool and sportive nature. Many a time has that straw formed the topic of serious discussion by serious writers. Some have pretended that it was designed to typify an expression used by one of his admiring followers in the House—a tribute to his "stable ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... tenaciously to the bare stones and variegate the monotonous gray with hues of yellow and red. Finally, a great deal of shrubbery clusters along the base of the stone wall, and takes away the hardness of its outline; and in due time, as the upshot of these apparently aimless or sportive touches, we recognize that the beneficent Creator of all things, working through His handmaiden whom we call Nature, has deigned to mingle a charm of divine gracefulness even with so earthly an institution as a boundary-fence. The clown who wrought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I heard, was sneering and critical? this the blue-stocking, of whom I stood in terror and dislike? this wondrous woman, full of counsel, full of tenderness, before whom every mean thing is ashamed, and hides itself; this new Corinne, more variously gifted, wise, sportive, eloquent, who seems to have learned all languages, Heaven knows when or how,—I should think she was born to them,—magnificent, prophetic, reading my life at her will, and puzzling me with riddles like this, 'Yours is an example of a destiny springing from character:' and, again, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... not the sportive child With shaft and twanging bow, Whose random arrows drove us ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... baptistery now is. Buonamico began the work, and had already completed the greater part of it, when a very curious circumstance occurred; and this, according to Franco Sacchetti, who relates it among his Three Hundred Stories, was as follows. The bishop had a large ape, of extraordinary cunning, the most sportive and mischievous creature in the world. This animal sometimes stood on the scaffold, watching Buonamico at his work, and giving a grave attention to every action: with his eyes constantly fixed on the painter, he observed him mingle his colors, handle the various flasks and tools, beat ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... probable that the pretty woman who is singing sportive French songs to the accompaniment of the instrument she strikes with her left hand is one of the Court ladies of the Czarina, who, as a rule, throws half-roubles out of her carriage to the street-musicians! Perhaps she is a Princess? possibly the wife of the Lord Chamberlain? or even ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... equal in genius, intellect and learning to any people under the sun, and speak a language older than Greek, and which is one of the immediate parents of the Greek. He was something more than the Welsh Ovid: he was the Welsh Horace, and wrote light, agreeable, sportive pieces, equal to any things of the kind composed by Horace in his best moods. But he was something more: he was the Welsh Martial, and wrote pieces equal in pungency to those of the great Roman ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... and wealth upon my friend. The generous sportive boy, who cared naught for gold, actually grew rich, for the Sphinx had granted him the most lucrative office in the county, the people made him their sheriff. He rose step by step to the highest place of honor in the community until ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... climate convey a sense of safety. Yet even one seasoned to such wonders as these might be startled, for a moment, before his account of the mountain sheep (Ovis montana). This ponderous animal, weighing three hundred and fifty pounds, has a sportive habit of leaping headlong from precipices one hundred feet high, and alighting on its horns, which, being strong and elastic, throw him ten or fifteen feet into the air, "and the next time he alights ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... step between their several homes, 20 Twins had they been in pleasure; after strife And petty quarrels, had grown fond again; Each other's advocate, each other's stay; And, in their happiest moments, not content, If more divided than a sportive pair [1] 25 Of sea-fowl, conscious both that they are hovering Within the eddy of a common blast, Or hidden only by the concave depth Of neighbouring billows from each ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... reposed upon the shore; Extended lay her beauteous form, a hundred feet and more. The sun, with rays flammivomous, beat on the blue-black sand; And sportive little Saurians disported on the strand; But oft the Iguanodon reproved them in their glee, And said, "Alas! this Saurian Age is not ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... the rock—crevices which the sharpest eye in the country had never seen before. Curiosity led them towards the turret, when they were charmed by the most exquisite sounds ever emitted by a fiddle-string, which, joined to the sportive mirth and glee accompanying it, reconciled them in a great measure to the scene, although they knew well enough the inhabitants of the nook were fairies. Nay, overpowered by the enchanting jigs played ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Englishman, and the trim, dainty little figure in fleecy white, with the ermine wrap thrown over the pretty plump shoulders and round neck, on which rare diamonds, that would have paid a king's ransom, gleamed fitfully whenever the sportive breeze tossed back the ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... in a fit of nameless fright, taking refuge in Aurelia's arms. Or they might play in the stately garden, provided they trod on no borders, and meddled with neither flower nor fruit. The old gardener began by viewing them as his natural enemies, but soon relaxed in amusement at their pretty sportive ways, gave them many precious spoils, and forgave more than one naughty little inroad, which ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... its title from one of the characters of the novel, an escaped negro slave, who has received from his sportive master the name of "Peculiar Institution." The great dramatic fact of the story lies in the kidnapping of the infant child of wealthy Northern parents who have been killed in a steamboat-explosion on the Mississippi. The child, a girl, is saved from the water, but saved by two "mean whites," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various |
