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Enliven   Listen
verb
Enliven  v. t.  (past & past part. enlivened; pres. part. enlivening)  
1.
To give life, action, or motion to; to make vigorous or active; to excite; to quicken; as, fresh fuel enlivens a fire. "Lo! of themselves th' enlivened chessmen move."
2.
To give spirit or vivacity to; to make sprightly, gay, or cheerful; to animate; as, mirth and good humor enliven a company; enlivening strains of music.
Synonyms: To animate; rouse; inspire; cheer; encourage; comfort; exhilarate; inspirit; invigorate.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Enliven" Quotes from Famous Books



... fellow a word of counsel and cheer. I shall think hard of you if you decline to let me drive you a little way. Besides, the freshness of the morning is all lost on you there. Now, set Marion a good example, and she will, in turn, enliven ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... of this band seemed so much disconcerted as to excite among the spectators strong prepossessions of their guilt. The real murderer had a countenance incapable of betraying him—a sullen, dark look, which neither the feast nor wine cup could enliven, and which the peril of discovery and death could ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... knowledge, or tolerate ignorance in my sex respecting them), yet pray, my good sir, do not, on this account only, show discontent and ill-humour towards her. If she is qualified to be your bosom friend, to advise, to comfort, and to soothe you;—if she can instruct your children, enliven your fireside by her conversation, and receive and entertain your friends in a manner which pleases and gratifies you;—be satisfied: we cannot expect to meet in a wife, or indeed in any one, exactly all we could wish. "I can easily," ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... for the best in the best of all possible worlds would seem to result from the wise remarks made by the fishermen who enliven the scene in "Pericles, Prince of Tyre." They compare landlords to whales who swallow up everything, and suggest that the land be purged of "these drones that rob the bee of her honey"; and Pericles, so far from being shocked at such ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... Dick's performance. Awakened from his doze, Zoroaster beat time to the melody, the only thing, Jerry said, he was capable of beating in his present shattered condition. After some little persuasion, the Magus was prevailed upon to enliven the company with a strain, which he trolled forth after a ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... splendid retinue. In the wild days of the Restoration, indeed, the most learned and eloquent divine might fail to draw a fashionable audience, particularly if Buckingham announced his intention of holding forth; for sometimes His Grace would enliven the dulness of a Sunday morning by addressing to the bevy of fine gentlemen and fine ladies a ribald exhortation which he called a sermon. But the Court of William was more decent; and the Academic ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... she cried, as she ceased playing: "here I have performed some of your favourite airs, and that too without eliciting a word of commendation. You are inexpressibly dull to-night; nothing seems to enliven you. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... acquainted with by and by); and lived there, with the Neumark for apanage, a true man's life;—mostly with a good deal of business, warlike and other, on his hands; with good Books, good Deeds, and occasionally good Men, coming to enliven it,—according to the terms ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... pounds in small cash may not circulate and enliven an Irish market, which many four-pound pieces ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... view; except where here or there a river, a wood, or mountain intervenes, as if to give a more pleasing variety to the scene. I don't remember ever having had a more agreeable journey; the fine prospects of the day so enliven'd by the gay chat of the evening, that I was really ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... character of the disturber, it appears now as a third, now as a fifth or seventh. This picture of the world is certainly not attractive; in it all change and becoming, all life and all activity is offered up on the altar of monotonous being. Happily Herbart is inconsistent enough to enliven this comfortless waste of changeless being by the relatively real or semi-real manifoldness of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... subserve his own interests. To this end, Richelieu, after mature deliberation, selected as the new favourite a page named Cinq-Mars,[234] whose extraordinarily handsome person and exuberant spirits could not fail, as he rightly imagined, to attract the fancy and enliven the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... Ball had "agreed to differ." Though the opinion itself may have lost the greatest part of its interest, and except for the historian is, as it were, superannuated; yet the grounds and causes of it, as far as they arose out of Lord Nelson's particular character, and may perhaps tend to re-enliven our recollection of a hero so deeply and justly beloved, will for ever possess an interest of their own. In an essay, too, which purports to be no more than a series of sketches and fragments, the reader, it is hoped, will readily excuse an occasional ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... then, that, if he will, any pilgrim may for the future draw (if he likes) that most difficult subject, snow hills beyond a grove of trees; that he may draw whatever he comes across in order to enliven his mind (for who saw it if not he? And was it not his loneliness that enabled him to see it?), and that he may draw what he never saw, with as much freedom as you readers so very continually see what you never draw. He may draw the morning mist on the Grimsel, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... say that this harsh decision proved the ruin of my professional prospects, and I was sent back to my wheelbarrow. It was when we were tired of our ordinary amusements, during a week of wet weather, that Polly and I devised a new piece of fun to enliven the monotony of the hours when we were shut up in that town nursery at the top of ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... "he does this out of pure innocence. It's a little dangerous, perhaps, to encourage this sort of freedom; but it is rather a good thing that he has arrived just at this moment. He may enliven us ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... light and graceful literary touch of Eha frequently cropping up amidst the dry bones of public health and commercial statistics, and the book is enlivened by innumerable witty and philosophic touches appearing in the most unlikely places, such as he alone could enliven a dull subject with. Would that all Government gazetteers were similarly adorned! But there are not many "Ehas" in ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... Sheridan took a desperate, but not altogether honourable, part. But the dramatist got more out of it than a pretty wife. Like all true geniuses, he employed his own experience in the production of his works, and drew from the very event of his life some hints or touches to enliven the characters of his imagination. Surely the bravado and cowardice of Captain Matthews, who on the first meeting in the Park is described as finding all kinds of difficulties in the way of their fighting, objecting now to the ground as unlevel, now to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... pessimistic and unpopular opinions had been discredited time and again, the newspapers, possibly to enliven their now perpetually gloomy columns with a little humor, gave some space to interviews which, with variations predicated on editorial ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... the abode had been left to her. It was solid and handsome of its kind, belonging to the days of the retired Q.C., and some of it would have been displaced for what was more fresh and tasteful if Magdalen had not consulted economy. So she depended on basket-chairs, screens, brackets and drapery to enliven the ancient mahagony and rosewood, and she had accumulated a good many water colours, vases and knick-knacks. The old grand piano was found to be past its work, so that she went the length of purchasing a cottage one for the drawing-room, and another ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... the reaction of this suppressed feeling: "The force with which it burst out when the pressure was taken off, gave the measure of the constraint which had been endured." Erasmus, that learned and charming writer, who was blessed with the genius which could enliven a folio, has well described himself, sum natura propensior ad jocos quam fortasse deceat:—more constitutionally inclined to pleasantry than, as he is pleased to add, perhaps became him. We know in his intimacy with Sir Thomas More, that Erasmus was a most exhilarating ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... them as follows:—"Their buildings," says Thornton, "are heavy in their proportions, bad in detail, both in taste and execution, fantastic in decoration, and destitute of genius. Their cities are not decorated with public monuments, whose object is to enliven or to embellish." Their religion forbids them every sort of painting, sculpture, or engraving; thus the fine arts cannot exist among them. They have no music but vocal; and know of no accompaniment except a bass of one ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... hostess or one of the butlers, is in reality only making a "fool" of himself if he only knew it. The same "taboo" also holds good as concerns feats of juggling and no hostess of today will, I am sure, ever issue a second invitation to a young man who has attempted to enliven her evening by balancing, on his nose, a knife, a radish, a plate of soup and a lighted candle. "Cleverness" is a valuable asset but only up to a certain point, and I know of one unfortunately "clever" young chap ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... "For my sake say no more, I entreat, I do dislike to hear so much said about anything or anybody. What sort of a road is it to Old Forest?" continued she; "why should not we ladies go with you, my dear Clarendon, to enliven the way." ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... cousin and I took our porridge of a morning, we had a device to enliven the course of a meal. He ate his with sugar, and explained it to be a country continually buried under snow. I took mine with milk, and explained it to be country suffering gradual inundation. You can imagine us exchanging bulletins; how here was an island still unsubmerged, here ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... satisfied, about the fire They draw their seats, and form a cheerful ring. The thrifty housewife turns her spinning wheel; The husband, useful even in his rest, A little basket weaves of willow twigs, To bear her eggs to town on market days; And work but serves t'enliven conversation. Some idle neighbours now come straggling in, Draw round their chairs, and widen out the circle. Without a glass the tale and jest go round; And every one, in his own native way, Does what he can to cheer the merry group. Each tells some little story ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... my writing an article is going to prevent all this; but as my time in the 'Atlantic' is coming round, I may as well write on what I am obliged to think of, and so I will give a paper on the subject to enliven our next ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... cramp'd, and our Laziness indulged, since, while young, we have little room to display our selves; and, when old, the Weakness of Nature must pass for Strength of Sense, and we hope that hoary Heads will raise us above the Attacks of Contradiction. Now, Sir, as you would enliven our Activity in the pursuit of Learning, take our Case into Consideration; and, with a Gloss on brave Elihus Sentiments, assert the Rights of Youth, and prevent the pernicious Incroachments of Age. The generous Reasonings of that gallant ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... would give $30,000,000 of revenue—twice as much as General Jackson's administration spent in its first year. Everybody can see, too, how the bringing in of $300,000,000 of imports into Southern ports would enliven business in our seaboard towns. I have seen with some satisfaction, also, Mr. President, that the war made upon us has benefitted certain branches of industry in my State. There are manufacturing establishments in North Carolina, the proprietors of which ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... of good things brought in from the pastry-cook's to enliven her; silk handkerchiefs and aprons abounded, and the servants at home received injunctions to inquire after Barbara's boy at ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... offer. Having accomplished a purchase, it became the overwhelming desire of the purchaser to present the article in question as a votive offering to the fair sales-woman herself. ... Such a recital was hardly calculative to enliven the occasion. Esmeralda frowned, and Pixie sighed, and for the first time in her existence doubted the entire superiority of being born a Briton. She remembered her rebuffs with the Della Robbia plaque and thought ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... and perhaps a romantic actor; but his father's tastes for his son's future lay in none of these directions, and Ned was for the present in cotton. Now the elder Mr. Hazell was a man of violently convivial habits, and the bonhomie, with which he was accustomed to enliven bar-parlours up till eleven of an evening, was apt to suffer a certain ungenial transformation as he reached his own front door. There the wit would fail upon his lips, the twinkle die out of his glance, and an unaccountable ferocity towards the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... joyest in S[u]a's rays"), yet do many of the hymns make no distinction between them. The Enlivener is naturally extolled in fitting phrase, to tally with his title: "The shining-god, the Enlivener, is ascended to enliven the world"; "He gives protection, wealth and children" (II. 38.1; IV. 53. 6-7). The later hymns seem, as one might expect, to show greater confusion between the attributes of the physical and spiritual sun. But what higher power under either name is ascribed to the sun ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... haphazard into the earth and by that act liberate a small stream which shall become a mighty river. Not less casual perhaps, certainly not less momentous in its consequences, was the first attempt, by some enterprising ecclesiastic, to enliven the hardly understood Latin service of the Church. Who the innovator was is unrecorded. The form of his innovation, however, may be guessed from this, that even in the fifth century human tableaux had a ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... will conduct to my cell some compassionate fair one, fond of books and retirement, who may be willing to enliven, with the songs of tenderness, the solitude ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... Adkins, the mine boss's boy, and Edith May Jonas, the liveryman's only daughter, every Mexican face recorded a slow smile of triumph. "'Sta 'ueno!" they would whisper, watching Edith May, who upon such occasions was wont to enliven things by bursting into tears, and who commonly brought upon the following day a note from her mother, stating that Edith May must be excused for missing in spelling because she had not been at all well ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... besides some fearful prescriptions which I obtained from a German veterinary surgeon, but to no purpose. I imagined her poor maw distended and inflamed with the baking sodden mass which no physic could penetrate or enliven. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... she crossed the portal, a sensation of terror ill-defined, but painful and overwhelming, smote upon her heart, such as we feel in the presence of a secret enemy, and Lord Greville's increasing uneasiness and abstraction since he had returned to the mansion of his forefathers, did not tend to enliven its gloomy precincts. The wind beat wildly against the casement of the apartment in which they sat, and which although named "the lady's chamber," afforded none of those feminine luxuries, which are now to be found in the most remote parts of England, in ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore

... of rovers. On the opposite coast of Africa, the Ceuta range grows every moment more distinct, the loftiest peaks mantled with snow, like the bleached, flowing drapery of the Bedouins. Still further on, dazzling white hamlets enliven the Morocco shore, with deep green, tropical verdure in the background. Ceuta attracts our interest, being a Spanish penal colony, which is surrounded by jealous, warlike Moors, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... her for the first hour, then, growing weary of the hubbub, wandered away from the market to explore the old town. She sat for a while in the churchyard, and there, to enliven her solitude, re-read that letter of Rivington's. Was he really taking up art again to please her? He had been very energetic. She wondered, smiling, how ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... European missionary's house. There, also, with his playing and singing, his caresses of the missionary's little girl and his unstinted admiration of the little booted feet of the missionary's lady, he would enliven the gathering as no one else could have done. Another behaving so absurdly would have been deemed a bore, but his transparent simplicity pleased all and drew them to join in ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... no longer, and that Father Abella has reminded her that if I stay in the house of Elena Castro I shall be as free from gossip as here. I infer that he has rated my two parents for making a martyr of me unnecessarily, and told them it was a duty to enliven my life as much as possible before I enter upon this long period of probation. The grating of my room at Elena's is above a little strip of Garden, and faces the blank wall of the next house. Sometimes—who knows?" She shrugged her shoulders and gave ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... acquainted with books and with many sciences; but such simple objects of contemplation suffice me, who have no time to bestow on more extensive observations. Happily these require no study, they are obvious, they gild the moments I dedicate to them, and enliven the severe labours which I perform. At home my happiness springs from very different objects; the gradual unfolding of my children's reason, the study of their dawning tempers attract all my paternal attention. I have to ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... to resist so imposing an aggregate: yet, I own, I should be very sorry to have The Beggar's Opera suppressed; for there is in it so much of real London life, so much brilliant wit, and such a variety of airs, which, from early association of ideas, engage, soothe, and enliven the mind, that no performance which the theatre ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... Judith immediately crossed the chamber, opened the door, and led into the apartment a beautiful creature, whose sudden and singular appearance might have made her almost pass for an apparition. She was deadly pale-there was not the least shade of vital red to enliven features, which were exquisitely formed, and might, but for that circumstance, have been termed transcendently beautiful. Her long black hair fell down over her shoulders and down her back, combed smoothly and regularly, but without the least appearance of decoration or ornament, which ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... sings, We toast, Confusion to the race of kings! At monarchy we nobly show our spight, And talk, what fools call treason, all the night. Who, by disgraces or ill fortune sunk, Feels not his soul enliven'd when he's drunk? Wine can clear up Godolphin's cloudy face, And fill Jack Smith with hopes to keep his place: By force of wine, ev'n Scarborough is brave, Hal[2] grows more pert, and Somers not so grave: Wine can give Portland wit, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... ungenial. At length, with a half-shake, he roused up a little, and giving a look of unequivocal contempt on every side, called out, 'Upon my soul, you're pleasant companions; but I'll give you a chant to enliven you!' So saying, he cleared his throat with a couple of short coughs, and struck up, with the voice of a Stentor, the following verse of a ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... Apollo, "it is all very well to enliven the reverend eremite; but don't you think it is rather a liberty to make such jokes at the expense of ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... was a child some six years of age when I saw her first, nearly twenty-five years ago. It is a long time to look back on; but I well remember the bright, winning face, and cordial manners of the little lady, when she would come to the parsonage and enliven our tranquil hearts by her gay, spontaneous glee. She was full of life and buoyancy; there was even then a sort of sparkling rapture about her existence, a keen susceptibility of enjoyment, and an intense ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... contents bills: "Another girl missing." The circumstance (which might have been no more than coincidence) that three girls had disappeared within the last eight weeks leaving no trace behind, had stimulated the professional scribes to link the cases, although no visible link had been found, and to enliven a somewhat dull journalistic season with theories about "a new ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... first visited the works at Greenside, she afterwards went to Leith to see the Smeaton, then loading for the Bell Rock. On stepping on board, Mrs. Dickson seemed to be quite overcome with so many concurrent circumstances, tending in a peculiar manner to revive and enliven the memory of her departed father, and, on leaving the vessel, she would not be restrained from presenting the crew with a piece of money. The Smeaton had been named spontaneously, from a sense of the obligation which a public work of the description of the Bell Rock owed ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Miss Carew was undoubtedly one of the latter. Her tongue babbled of beauties and courts, of manners, of wealth, and of chiffons, with the free idealism of an amateur, and this without intending to do more than enliven the dull daily walks through ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... from whom it takes its name, is too detestable a picture of human meanness and depravity to be fit for farce, the proper effects of which, however nonsensical it may be, ought to be to enliven and not create disgust. We cannot bear to see a respectable actor in it. Blisset, a favourite son of Momus, played the Sheepstealer. Mr. West, whom we have mentioned in Hawbuck, played Old Snarl with great humour, which his audience, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... and poisoned himself in the dock.[4] A third was William Thompson, known as 'Blarney,' a painter, who had married a rich wife in 1767, but had apparently spent her money by this time.[5] Mrs. Stephen condescended to enliven the little society by her musical talents. The prisoners in general welcomed Stephen as a champion of liberty. A writ of 'Habeas Corpus' was obtained, and Stephen argued his case before Lord Mansfield. The great lawyer was naturally less amenable to reason than the prisoners. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... performers in the Banjee boat began to exert their talents to the great delight of their hearers, who rewarded them with showers of pence. Not, however, of this character are the principal Banjee boats; which really contain very good musicians, who enliven the harbour with their sweet harmony, and are often some of the best performers from the Opera House. Valetta harbour is in truth as lively and animated, as interesting and picturesque a sheet of water as is to be found in any part of the world. On ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... still. In brilliant brightness breaks the broad expanse Of firmament! Heaven opens to our glance; And day once more out-pours its silvery sheen, A couch pearl-decked, fit for its orient queen; (aurora) The sun beams brightly over hill and dale Its glancing rays enliven every vale: Its face effulgent makes the heaven to smile Thro' dripping rain-drops yet it smiles the while, Its warmth makes loveable the teeming world, Hill, dale, where'er its royal rays are hurled; Sweet nature smiles, ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... less punctilious about the truth than I propose to be, would, at this stage of the narrative, insert a whopping lie for the sake of effect, or "action," or "heart interest," as such things are called in the present world of letters. He would enliven his tale by making Mr. Pless do something sensational while he was about it, such as yanking his erstwhile companion out of her place of hiding by the hair of her head, or kicking down all the barricades about the place, ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... was in Paris, an incident occured, the recollection of which has served to enliven many a social occasion. It was the exciting time succeeding the attempted assassination of Napoleon by Orsini. Mr. Lee always wore a long, sandy beard, and in his travels sported a soft, broad-brimmed hat. One day, while walking about the streets, he was arrested and taken to the Palais de Justice. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... the true type, and it is he that the ego-friskish imitate. Such a critic in the jovial person of Mr. Chesterton, or Professor Phelps, or Heywood Broun, contributes much to the vividness of our sense for books. But their imitators, although they sometimes enliven, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... this last term. One knows what it is. It's always like that. One always was happy; one so seldom is. Happiness to be realised needs faint perception of sadness as needs the egg the touch of salt to manifest its flavour. Flashes of entertainment may enliven the most wretched of us; but that's pleasure; that's not happiness. One comes to know the only true and ideal happiness is happiness tinctured with faintest, vaguest hint of tears. It is peace; and who knows peace that has not come to it through storm, or knoweth storm ahead, or in storm ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... instant had hardly elapsed ere our main-deck was burst in, and a few minutes after the lee bulwark was entirely overwhelmed. A heavy sea broke entirely over us, and none could see the smallest aperture through which hope might enter, and enliven the chill and dreary prospect ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... a very pretty sort of young man, but did not much enliven us. Soon after I perceived Captain Bouchier, who, after talking some time with Mrs. Thrale, and various parties, made up to us, and upon Augusta's being called upon to dance a minuet, took her place, and began a very lively sort ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... destitute of any claim to originality either of conception or treatment. The artist's share of the work is by far the best part of the somewhat lugubrious entertainment, which the performances of his literary associates scarcely serve to enliven. The book, however, was a success in its day, for, if we mistake not, it was followed by a second series, is even now sought after by the "collector" (not bibliomaniac), and possesses some historical value by reason of the fact that ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... Dandelion, to which many believe it related, the petals often taking the form of a crown or coronet. The leaves are covered with sharp stinging spines like those of the Nettle, and the odor is most pungent. However, though a disagreeable plant, it has nevertheless a certain vogue, and serves to enliven ...
— Cupid's Almanac and Guide to Hearticulture for This Year and Next • John Cecil Clay

... friends, so that they are not reduced to the simple alternatives of gaping at each other's dresses and eating lobster-salad and ice-cream. There is either some choice music, or a reading of fine poetry, or a well-acted charade, or a portfolio of photographs and pictures, to enliven the hour and start conversation; and as the people are skilfully chosen with reference to each other, as there is no hurry or heat or confusion, conversation, in its best sense, can bubble up, fresh, genuine, clear, and sparkling as a woodland spring, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... companion to Delphiniums, Salvias, and perennial Lobelias in the mixed border. The stately spikes of this flower also associate well with shrubs, and help to enliven a bed of Rhododendrons at a period of the year when the latter is uninteresting. Roots may be planted in any soil from November to March; and, as they are perfectly hardy, they can be left in the open ground all the year without the least misgiving ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... Principal. The girls were a few minutes early, and in consequence were drawn up like a small regiment in the corridor to wait until a previous class was over and they could enter the lecture hall. Waiting is often dull work, and Gipsy had considered herself a public benefactor in seeking to enliven the tedium of her form mates. Doreen's notions on the subject of discipline did ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... on the walls. Sorrow and sadness within; gloom, fog, or drizzly rain without. If the commissioners at Ghent do not soon make peace, or establish an exchange, we shall be lost to our country, and to hope. The newspapers now and then enliven us with the prospect of peace. We are told that growing dissentions at Vienna will induce Great Britain to get rid of her transatlantic enemy, in order to combat those nearer home. Whenever we see in the ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... of the encroaching slums, like a stag before a pack of hounds. Here he ensconced himself, placed his tin cup on the top of his organ, together with the few pairs of shoe-laces which proclaimed him a merchant within rather than a beggar without the law, and proceeded to enliven the still quiet neighborhood with the dreadfully strained measure of Verdi's "Miserere." He turned the handles of the little organ fitfully, so that now the strains of sorrow arose at such long intervals as hardly to be connected with one another, and now all huddled ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... whole class of frankly blackguardly plays, in which unscrupulous low comedians attract crowds to gaze at bevies of girls who have nothing to exhibit but their prettiness, will vanish like the obscene songs which were supposed to enliven the squalid dulness, incredible to the younger generation, of the music-halls fifteen years ago. On the other hand, plays which treat sex questions as problems for thought instead of as aphrodisiacs will be freely performed. Gentlemen of Mr Redford's way of thinking will have ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... coming speech—did certainly at that moment enliven the curate's manner. He jerked his head from side to side like a bird; he cleared his throat, and clasped his hands, and looked with a gentle interest at the company. Getting into spirits seemed, in the case of this excellent person, to be alarmingly ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... melancholy in a vehicle; Italians too wary to talk; Spaniards have no public conveyances; and Russians no roads. There is no amusement except in the lumbering diligences of France, that gabbling and indiscreet country, where every one is in a hurry to laugh and show his wit, and where jest and epigram enliven all things, even the poverty of the lower classes and the weightier cares of the solid bourgeois. In a coach there is no police to check tongues, and legislative assemblies have set the fashion of public discussion. When a young man of twenty-two, like the one named Georges, is clever ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... as well as Georgian, respecting the taste of audiences. "Should a man," he says, "present to such an auditory the most sententious tragedy that ever was written, observing all the critical laws, as height of style, and gravity of person, enrich it with the sententious chorus, and, as it were, enliven death in the passionate and weighty Nuntius; yet after all this divine rapture, O dura messorum ilia, the breath that comes from the uncapable multitude is able to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... verisimile', is the dramatist's rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory manners, ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object be reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the writings of, an antiquarian. Pistol, Nym and 'id genus omne', do not please us as characters, but are endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native wit of Falstaff.—I say wit emphatically; for this character so often extolled as the masterpiece of humor, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... expanded to that degree of glory which drinks in the vast revolution of humanity, its end, its mighty destination, and the causes which operated, and are still operating, to produce a more elevated station, and the objects which energize and enliven its consummation. This he is a stranger to; he is not aware that woman is the recipient of celestial love, and that man is dependent upon her to perfect his character; that without her, philosophically and truly speaking, the brightest of his intelligence is ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... although the individual man becomes but a dead branch on the tree of life, still the tree lives. Through the cross-phallus idea, or through man's power to create, existence on the earth continues. Although the sun dies in winter, in spring it revives again to quicken and enliven Nature ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... stem! what ancestors Where those you sprang from, and what years were mark'd In your first childhood? Tell me of the fold, That hath Saint John for guardian, what was then Its state, and who in it were highest seated?" As embers, at the breathing of the wind, Their flame enliven, so that light I saw Shine at my blandishments; and, as it grew More fair to look on, so with voice more sweet, Yet not in this our modern phrase, forthwith It answer'd: "From the day, when it was said ' Hail ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... o'er the cheering prospect. She kissed and fondled Louise and even teased her. Reading or chatting to the blind girl, sewing her frocks or performing a thousand and one kindly services, her sole thought was to distract and enliven the prisoned soul ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... these we may add Galiani, the smallest, the wittiest, and the most delightful of abbes, whose piercing insight and Machiavellian subtlety lent a piquant charm to the stories with which for hours he used to enliven this choice company; Caraccioli, gay, simple, ingenuous, full of Neapolitan humor, rich in knowledge and observation, luminous with intelligence and sparkling with wit; and the Comte de Crentz, the learned and versatile Swedish minister, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... the Cabinet seems to possess for the aboriginal Indian. This child of nature appears to materialize with remarkable facility, and, having apparently doffed his characteristic phlegm in the happy hunting grounds, enters with extreme zest on the lighter gambols which sometimes enliven the sombre monotony of a seance. Almost every Medium keeps an Indian 'brave' in her cohort of Spirits; in fact, there is no Cabinet, howe'er so ill attended, but has some Indian there. It is strange, too, that, as far as I know, departed ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... precipice, but I've chucked over a wopper that beats him all to sticks. Hallo! I say that's worthy of Punch. P'r'aps I'll be a contributor to it w'en I gets back from Zwizzerland, if I ever does get back, vich is by no means certain. Susan, my girl, I'll 'ave summat to enliven you with this evenin'." ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... because I spoke a little loud, in asking you how you could let the dear children go out with a neighbor? Remember their dying mother entrusted them to my care—'tis sacred, you see—and with them, I am like an old hen after her chickens," added he, laughing to enliven Frances. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... growing more and more enraged; "he was quite right not to meddle with that which goes on in secret; although we, as miners, cannot see the matter exactly in the same light as he did. Solid masses have grown like the rest of us; and who can say whether they may not enliven and further the shooting and coalescing of the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... sure give her an elegant pain, else," added Curly, in a tired voice. He was steadily staring down the trail in a manner that suggested indifference to any coming storm. Somebody laughed half-heartedly. But Curly had no desire to enliven things, and ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... used to have kind friends around him at the pier, to enliven his long waiting hours. But Glory Goldie nearly always tramped there alone. She spoke to no one, and folks were glad to leave her in peace, for they felt that there was something uncanny about her which had been the cause of her ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... scarcely of the kind to enliven foreign travel, though they made her so easy and pleasant a companion; but he saw at once how they would fall into place in their proper setting. He had no fear of being oppressed by them, for his artistic and intellectual life would ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... Random Talks, and The Life I Ought to Live, Mr. Strong gives us practical, interesting, and helpful suggestions for leading broad spiritual lives of love and usefulness. Many anecdotes enliven the text. ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... which endured to the end of her brief misspent existence. "Gredin d'Anglais, va!" she was wont to say, grinding her little white teeth melodramatically, whenever she recalled that dreary entertainment, and the failure of her simple stratagems to enliven her ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... the two least satisfactory members of the family were sadly enduring the consequences of their foolishness. To Frank and Jean the world seemed a very gray place at present; and even the daily increasing juvenility of their parent failed to enliven them. They were too engrossed in their own unhappiness to take much notice of it; and what they saw merely distressed them, for so far his beneficent projects had not included them. Frank moped about the house, consorted occasionally with an acquaintance, ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... for Berlin, Frank. It is wrong for a man to brood so over a misfortune as he is doing. Is it not possible for us to do more to enliven him and cause him to think less of his disappointment and the shock he ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish

... Trespolo fulfilled his master's injunctions punctually. With him fear was the guiding principle. That evening the fisherman's supper table was hopelessly dull, and the sham pilgrim tried in vain to enliven it by factitious cheerfulness. Nisida was preoccupied by her lover's departure, and Solomon, sharing unconsciously in his daughter's grief, swallowed but a drop or two of wine, to avoid resisting the repeated urgency ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... and quieted. In this fashion a girl may treat a young man as a brother. She may tell him his faults in all kindness. She may listen to his dreams, ambitions, aspirations, and encourage with approval, incite by gentle sarcasm, or enliven by kindly sportiveness; but her person is her own, and he should be made to feel that beyond these bounds he may not pass. Such friendship may endure vicissitude, or separation, and be through life a source of truest inspiration. To be such a friend ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... am glad to compose the book. The time is short, it is true, for it must be performed about the middle of September; but the circumstances connected with the performances, and a number of other purposes, are of such a character that they enliven my spirits in such a degree that I hurry to my writing desk and remain seated there with ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... enliven and add interest to the historic page, have proved of spontaneous and vigorous growth in the new settlements of America. Nearly every book which deals with the early planting and progress of the American colonists and pioneers, contains full, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... of her eyes, a condition altogether very unpropitious in which to commence the career of arms in the capacity of field-marshal to a youthful Queen. Notwithstanding all this, however, she exerted herself to enliven everybody, to console, to inspire fortitude and a spirit of joyousness around her, never to see things on their darkest side or through her ailing eye, but to obey rather the buoyant spirit and an inclination to hope for the best, which was natural ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... those certain oddities of his which he does not wish you to lose sight of altogether; and it is time, too, for another of those stories, which serve to divert the attention when it threatens to become too fixed, and break up and enliven the dull passages, besides having that other purpose which he speaks of so frankly. And although this whole discussion is not without a direct bearing upon that particular topic, with which it is here connected, inasmuch ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... bear, who stood on his head, and marched upright, and bowed with prodigious gravity to his master; and a hare that beat a drum, and a cock that strutted on little stilts disdainfully. These things made Gerard laugh now and then; but the gay scene could not really enliven it, for his heart was not in tune with it. So hearing a young man say to his fellow that the Duke had been in the meadow, but was gone to the Stadthouse to entertain the burgomasters and aldermen and the competitors for the prizes, and their friends, he suddenly ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... inward state, continued an unfailing well-spring of cheerfulness and courage. Not a disheartening word escaped him, nor a sign of weakening. And his efforts to enliven his companion were persistent—and successful. Being of a hopeful and self-reliant nature this task was not ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... of fashioning a reflector, it is necessary for the workman to remain with his hand on the mirror for many hours in succession. When such labours were in progress, Caroline used to sit by her brother, and enliven the time by reading stories aloud, sometimes pausing to feed him with a spoon while his hands were engaged on the task from which he could not ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... children in their homes may have served to enliven the situation of Saint John's pioneer settlers it added greatly to their anxiety and distress in the ensuing war period. More than this the absence of church and school privileges was becoming a matter ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... aphelion in Kabul. Morning bashfully overtakes him; and the train dances into stations festooned with branches of olive and palm. A feu-de-joie of champagne corks is fired; special correspondents in clean white trousers enliven the scene; Baron Reuter's ubiquitous young man turns on rapturous telegrams; and a faint smile dawns darkly on ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... possible, more solitary than the night. The noise of the wild turkey, the croaking of the raven, or the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech tree, did not much enliven the dreary scene. The various tribes of singing birds are not inhabitants of the desert. They are not carnivorous and therefore must be fed from the labors of man. At any rate they did not exist in this country at ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... two crimson-speckled flowers were bursting from their green sheaths, "I dare say, you don't know what makes this fox-glove bend and sway so gracefully. You think it is blown by the wind, don't you?" He looked at her with a grave smile, which did not enliven his thoughtful eyes, but gave an ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... myself less labour and care by having somebody paint me a large landscape of this garden and surveyed it at my leisure. There I was high in a tree, dangling my legs, and staring at smooth lawns, ornamental copses, and brilliant flower-beds without even so much as a dog to enliven the scene. "O'Ruddy," said I to myself after a long time, "you've hung yourself here in mid-air like a bacon to a rafter, and I'll not say much to you now. But if you ever reach the ground without ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... ended, with a sudden and most unreasonable ferocity, his visage empurpling if possible still more, "see to it that you pit neither that courage nor that wit against me again. I have heard the story of how you came to be Fool of the Court of Pesaro. Cesena is a dull place, and we might enliven it by the presence of a jester of such nimble ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... Sophia Egerton, patting his head with one hand, whilst with the other she wiped a tear from her always smiling eye, "forgive me if I have hurt you. I like you vastly, though I must now and then laugh at you; you know I hate dismals, so let this tune enliven us all!" and flying to her piano, she played and sang two or three merry airs, till the countess commanded her to ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... shooting in this forest is good, chiefly deer and pheasants. It belongs to the domain of the State, and is leased to a former director of Anzin. That the country is a pleasant land to live in appears from such facts as this, as well as from the blue, yellow, russet and rose-pink houses which enliven the long highway from Valenciennes, and are the habitations of well-to-do people living here on their incomes. From Valenciennes to the Belgian frontier, indeed, the road is virtually one long continuous street of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert



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