"Racy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the present crisis of public affairs—(he called it cresses)—and assured his masses that the Tories were about to be for ever plucked from the pedestal on which they had long been planted by ascendency and greed! This was not so racy as the mixed metaphor of a Galway paper, which assures its readers that "the Unionist party will soon be compelled to disgorge the favouritism which for so long has been centred in their hands;" but it might ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... to Swazieland, and has written a lively narrative of his perilous journey. He went on a professional retainer. You don't catch Bedford Row in Swazieland on other terms. Being there, he kept his eyes open, saw a good deal, and describes his impressions in racy fashion. He did not like the coffee served en route, and was disappointed with the Southern Cross; but on the whole enjoyed the trip. One would naturally expect that the price of his book would be six-and-eight-pence, or, regarding it in the form of a ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... the College. He knew the game thoroughly. His cricket "Bible," if I may use the expression, was Prince Ranjitsinhji's excellent "Jubilee Book of Cricket." He often accompanied the 1st XI for out-of-town matches, to act as scorer or reporter. His cricket reports in The Alleynian make racy reading. The following is taken from a picturesquely-written account of a victory over Brighton at ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... half of The Life of Julius Caesar, which Shakespeare draws upon very heavily, Plutarch emphasizes those weaknesses of Caesar which are made so prominent in the play. Besides this, in many places the Plutarchian form and order of thought, and also the very words of North's racy and delectable English are retained, with such an embalming for immortality ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... there and watch his horses graze, but ever he saw that the riders were close at hand, and that the horses did not get out on the slope of sage. He sat back and gloried in the sight. He owned bands of mustangs; near by was a field of them, fine and mettlesome and racy; yet Bostil had eyes only for the blooded favorites. Strange it was that not one of these was a mustang or a broken wild horse, for many of the riders' best mounts had been captured by them or the Indians. And it was Bostil's supreme ambition to own a great wild stallion. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... that he seldom or never cried, but he sometimes laughed, and that not unfrequently; and when he did so you could not choose but hear, for his whole soul gushed out in his laugh, which was rich, racy, and riotous. He usually lay down and rolled when he laughed, being quite incapable of standing to do it—at least during the early period of babyhood. But Will would not laugh at everything. You could not make him laugh by cooing and smirking and talking nonsense, and otherwise ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... this there follows dancing; but, unfortunately, the authorities are wanting for stating whether the Convention danced or not. In any event, it is present at the dance, and thus consecrates an unique orgy, not Rubens' "Kermesse" in the open air, racy and healthy, but a nocturnal boulevard-jollification, a "Mardi-gras" composed of lean and haggard scapegraces.—In the great nave of the Cathedral, "the dancers, almost naked, with bare necks and breasts, and stockings ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... was constantly in the public eye. Her house, during the hours at any rate in which her boy was at school, was little else than a halting-place between two journeys. Visits to the poor, long watches by the sick; committees, in which her racy breadth of character gave her always an important place; discussions with the vicar, arguments with the curates, a chat with this person and a walk with that—these were the incidents and occupations which filled her day. Life was delightful to her; action, energy, influence, were delightful ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... (1850), Mr Taylor declines from the promise of his earlier efforts. The preface suggests great things; but they are not forthcoming. There is much careful finish, much sententious rhetoric, much elegant description; but there is little of racy humour (the play is a 'romantic comedy'), little of poetical freshness, little of lively flesh and blood portraiture, and more of melodramatic expedience than dramatic construction. Neither comedy nor melodrama is our ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... the fierce pleading of the ragamuffins. Two or three newspaper men joined the knot around them and the story was presently written up with all the racy touches that the writers of the hour know how to use. Before night Buck, with his fierce black brows drawn in helpless defiance was adorning the evening papers in various attitudes as the different snapshots portrayed him, and the little group of newsboys ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... was no seat for my friend, and he stood leaning against the wall, trying to get her into easy conversation. The little kitchen looked so cheerless and bare that dull morning that it reminded me again of a passage in that rude, racy song of the Lancashire ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... the districts of London and Berkshire were allotted to him. His report, published in the following year, was a model of what a report should be. It was full of information, admirably classified and arranged, and was so racy,—by virtue of the facts brought to light, and the care taken to preserve the very words of the witnesses as they were spoken,—that the report may be read with interest by the most inveterate ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... worth,—Charles Liversage Spence." It was an attempt, as she explained to me, to return to the rational style and improving tone of Jane Austen, whose novels were sound educators as well as sources of amusement. From Miss Kingsley's natural fluency and sprightliness I expected something "racy," to quote Paul Barr, and I was disappointed to find "Moderation" dull and didactic. It was however heralded and published with a great flourish of trumpets; and Mr. Spence wrote a review of it in one of the leading newspapers under the symbol XXX (a signature of his ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... drum. He disports himself with the infinitely dignified string-quartet, makes it do light and acrobatic things. There is one interlude of "Petruchka" that is written for snare-drums alone. His work is incrusted with cheap waltzes and barrel-organ tunes. It is gamy and racy in style; full of musical slang. He makes the orchestra imitate the quavering of an old hurdy-gurdy. Of late he has written a ballet for eight clowns. And he is reported to have said, "I should like to bring it about that music be performed in street-cars, while people get out ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... on Easter-day; this in 1474 fell on April 10th, thus giving, as the day of the conclusion of the translation, 31 March 1475, the same year being the earliest possible period of its appearance as a printed book." Then there is Caxton's own racy account of the circumstances under which the ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... scientific, and racy. A book of intense practical thought, which one wishes to read carefully and then ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... the sense that Wordsworth's dalesmen and women are provincial; that is, they are, in the true sense, universal.... No recent work is more worth reading.... Mr. Gibson has fashioned for his peasants the rich, racy, coloured, vigorous speech that is essential to them. No thing of book this.... As peasant talk it rings true; its rich tang is ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... days later Paul received the breeziest of letters; it was one of a series of racy rhapsodies that came to him bearing the Santa Rosa postmark. They were such letters as a fellow might write to a college chum, but with no line that could have brought a blush to the cheek of modesty—not that the college ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... with the second course. The table was no sooner cleared of the cloth, and the racy wine with double rows of glasses again placed in array, than almonds, raisins, olives, oranges, Indian conserves, and biscuits deviled, covered the board! To it again they fell, with unabating vigour! I soon found reason ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... plates. They gave details of hotel accommodation and of means of communication, such as we now expect to find in any well-regulated guide-book, and they dealt largely in reported conversations with intelligent foreigners, racy innkeepers, and garrulous peasants. In a word, ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... is no doubt that it had much to do with forming his political character, and in laying the foundation of the sturdy inflexibility with which he held to his political principles. One of his early friends says, "He liked the Weekly Dispatch. The politics, being racy, had a great attraction for him, and he used to ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... stentorian voice the chairman announced that Captain Ellesborough from Ralstone camp had come "to tell us what America is doing!" A roar from the crowd. Ellesborough saluted gaily, and then his hands in his pockets began to talk to them. His speech, which was a racy summary of all that America was doing to help the Allies, was delivered to a ringing accompaniment of cheers from the thronged market-place, rising to special thunder when the captain dwelt on the wheat and bacon that America ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... real living boys, with their virtues and faults. The Cornish fishermen are drawn from life, they are racy of the soil, salt with the sea-water, and they stand out from the pages in their jerseys and sea-boots all sprinkled with silvery ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... threw back his head, ranging with his eyes the opposite side of the room and showing himself at last so much more completely as diverted that it fairly attracted their hostess's notice. Mrs. Lowder, however, only smiled on Milly for a sign that something racy was what she had expected, and resumed, with a splash of her screw, her cruise among the islands. "Oh, I've heard that," the young man ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... Sandymount, Dublin, in 1865, the son of John B. Yeats, the Irish artist, the greater part of William Butler Yeats' childhood was spent in Sligo. Here he became imbued with the power and richness of native folk-lore; he drank in the racy quality through the quaint fairy stories and old wives' tales of the Irish peasantry. (Later he published a collection of ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... there is little or none. The later and less genuine chansons borrow to some extent the methods and incidents in the romances; but the romances at no time exhibit much resemblance to the chansons proper, which have an extremely distinct, racy, and original character of their own. Hallam, writing later than Dunlop, and if with a less wide knowledge of Romance, with a much greater proficiency in general literary history, practically passes the chansons de geste over altogether in the introduction to his Literature of Europe, which ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... of the pamphlet is given over to expounding the illogicalities and inconsistencies of the established spelling, and here G. W.'s style of writing, which is colloquial, racy and allusive, is effective enough. It is not so well suited, however, to orderly and clear exposition of his proposed amendment—unfortunately, since this is what is likely to be of most interest to us ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... most direct and simple required. It is also the least literary and the most popular. Unamuno, who lives in close touch with the people, has enriched the Spanish literary language by returning to it many a popular term. His vocabulary abounds in racy words of the soil, and his writings gain from them an almost peasant-like pith and directness which suits his own Basque primitive nature. His expression occurs simultaneously with the thoughts and feelings to ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... to corrupt the mind of the simple. Democracy in England has been the chief representative of veritable Englishness up to these days. It was never Latinized or Frenchified. The cottage garden refused to follow the bad example of the "carpet-bedder." The poor have always been racy of the soil. They have laughed at the absurdities of fashion and seen through the pretensions of wealth. They have believed in heartiness and cheerfulness. All their proverbs spring out of a keen sense of virtue. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... describe the preparations of William on his landing, with a graphic vigour, which would be wholly lost by transfusing their racy Norman couplets and terse Latin prose into the current style of modern history. It is best to follow them closely, though at the expense of much quaintness and occasional uncouthness of expression. They tell us how Duke William's own ship was the first of the Norman ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... dignified self respect, with unfailing gracious courtesy to others, those manners in which frankness and refinement mingled with and set off each other, that perfect purity of thought and utterance, and yet that thorough enjoyment of all that was good and racy in wit or humour—this has passed away with him. So beautiful and consistent a life in that kind of living ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... really a well-informed fellow," he observed, when Barton had retired. "I am not so sure that we shall find him in the way, after all. He told us that story about the artist's model in quite a racy fashion. He seems to be up to date in his notions. I am a bit curious to find out if he can paint or if it is only tall talk, but he certainly seems bent on it. Now I must turn in, for I am dead beat. Oh, by-the-bye, Livy, ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... he had written two engineering essays of utmost promise, the engineering was given up, and he consented to study law. He had already contributed to College Magazines, and had had even a short spell of editing one; of one of these he has given a racy account. Very soon after his call to the Bar articles and essays from his pen began to appear in Macmillan's, and later, more regularly in the Cornhill. Careful readers soon began to note here the presence of a new force. He had gone on the Inland Voyage ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... day to the place on purpose to disinherit him before the assembled Rabbis. It so happened that Rabbon Yochanan was at that time lecturing before some of the great men of Jerusalem, and when he saw the father enter, he pressed Rabbi Eliezer to deliver an exposition. So racy and cogent were his observations that Rabbon Yochanan rose and styled him his own Rabbi, and thanked him in the name of the rest for the instruction he had afforded them. Then the father of Rabbi Eliezer said, "Rabbis, I came here for the purpose ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... be by far the most valuable and important Judge Haliburton has ever written. The exhaustless fund of humour—quiet, yet rich and racy, and at the same time overflowing with the milk of human kindness—which his writings display on one hand, and the wonderful knowledge of man's character, in all its countless varieties, which they exhibit on the other, have insured for them a high, and honourable, and enduring ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... one vowed not to say "its," which ought to have been in Shakespeare; "his" "hers," for inanimate objects, being but a barbarous and really inexpressive survival. Yet we have known many things like this. Racy Saxon monosyllables, close to us as touch and sight, he will intermix readily with those long, savoursome, Latin words, rich in "second intention." In this late day certainly, no critical process can be conducted reasonably without eclecticism. Of [17] such eclecticism we have a justifying example ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... finer. We like to know the lineage of ideas, just as we like to know the lineage of great earls and swift race-horses. We like to know that the discovery of the law of gravitation was born of the fall of an apple in an English garden on a summer afternoon. Essays written after this fashion are racy of the soil in which they grow, as you taste the larva in the vines grown on the slopes of Etna, they say. There is a healthy Gascon flavour in Montaigne's Essays; and Charles Lamb's are scented with the primroses ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... vigorous pencil-strokes Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks; Whose fireside stories, grave or gay, In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way, With old New England's flavor rife, Waifs from her rude idyllic life, Are racy as the legends old By Chaucer or Boccaccio told; To her who keeps, through change of place And time, her native strength and grace, Alike where warm Sorrento smiles, Or where, by birchen-shaded isles, Whose summer winds have shivered o'er ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of Racy vintage rare as love)— With his merry, wanton air, Mirth and vanity and folly Why should he be made to bear Burden of some melancholy Song that swoons and sinks with care? Cease to call him sad or sober,— He's a jolly ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... sight of a snaky slim cowpuncher on a racy horse intensified this impression in Pan's mind, stamped the future more vividly on his heart. It was what ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... cabbage would be fit to eat. But, of course, it isn't all this. There is catkin pollen on the wind, hazel and sassafras are both in bloom now, and so are several of the earliest little flowers of the woods. You can gather enough of them combined to temper the disagreeable odour into a racy sweetness, and all the shrub blooms are good tonics, too, and some of the earthy ones. I'm going to try giving some of you empty cases next spring and analyzing the honey to learn if it isn't ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... threatening to go to London, if Kervick had been here. The General was a gentleman, and yet had the flexible adaptability of a retainer; he had been trained in discipline, and hence knew how to defer without becoming fulsome or familiar; he was a man of the world and knew an unlimited number of racy stories, and even if he repeated some of them unduly, they were better than no stories at all. And then, there was his matchless, unfailing patience in playing chess or backgammon or draughts or bezique, whatever he perceived that ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... as he is commonly called despite his sixty years, is quite a character in his way. He is an amusing old gossip, with a turn for racy comment and a finger in everybody's pie. He knows everything about everybody in ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... whose guest I was. The fact that we were without butter, and that "sweetness" (molasses) was low, was scarcely even noticed. I remember as if it were yesterday the stimulating tang of the frosty air and the racy problem of the open sea yet to be covered. The bag of birds which we had captured when we had driven in for shelter from the storm made our dry-diet supper sweeter than any Delmonico ten-course dinner, because we had wrested it ourselves from the reluctant ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Alexander Square, was the residence of Captain Glascock, who commanded H.M.S. Tyne, and whose pen has enriched the nautical novel literature of England {73} with the same racy humour which has distinguished his professional career. When commanding in the Douro, some communications which Glascock had occasion to make to the Governor of Oporto not having received that attention which the English captain considered was due to them, ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... sent forth with love and prayer. Such a farmer is the incarnation of moral grandeur. Let men laugh, if they will, at his overalls and plough, his wide-brimmed hat, his simple manners, and his homely, racy speech. His feet are by the furrow, but his heart is in heaven, and his treasure is there also. Says the author of Nine Acres on the Hillside, "The agriculturist walks side by side ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... find that Mr. Heady (Uncle Juvinell) has produced a very entertaining and instructive volume. It is written in a racy, sprightly style, that cannot fail to captivate the mind. Partaking himself of the buoyancy and good humor of boyhood, the author is able to write for the boys in a manner that is at once attractive and profitable. ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... it derives from the classical world, but also that curious strength of which there are great resources in the true middle age. And as I have illustrated the early strength of the Renaissance by the story of Amis and Amile, a story which comes from the North, in which a certain racy Teutonic flavour is perceptible, so I shall illustrate that other element, its early sweetness, a languid excess of sweetness even, by another story printed in the same volume of the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne, and of about the same ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... late in their camp, and the moon was getting low down through the mulga. Mitchell's mate had just finished a rather racy yarn, but it seemed to fall flat on Mitchell—he was in a sentimental mood. He smoked a while, and ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... of hunting-adventures, and told stories of these enterprises in a racy way, peculiarly characteristic of the man. The following narrative from his own lips, the reader will certainly peruse with ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... fight, making mention of many incidents which his friend had omitted to touch on, and dwelling particularly on the deeds of Kettle. As to that flat-nosed individual himself, when called upon to speak, he addressed the assembly with a dignity of manner and a racy utterance of language which amazed those who had only known him as a thrall, and who now for the first time met him as a freed man. He moreover introduced into his speech a few touches of humour which convulsed his audience ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... could get from Alathea was interesting to me. Apart from the sadly interesting subject, she had admirable powers of narration. Her language (when it did not become too local for my comprehension) was forcible and racy to a degree, and she was not checked by the reserve which clogged Mr. Jonathan's lips. The following morning she came to the door of the drawing-room (a large dreary room, which, like the rest of the house, was handsomely upholstered ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the most racy and interesting book of travels we have read for a long time. Every body is of course acquainted with the general history of the expedition; its romantic projects, its speedy defeat, and the calamitous sufferings which its members were forced to undergo. But ill-fated ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... accept, and the fun begins. First it's a little dinner to meet my friends Mr. and Mrs. De Boodle, of Nevada. Everybody there, hungry, dinner from Sherrys, best wines in the market. De Boodles covered with diamonds, a great success, especially old John De Boodle, who tells racy stories over the demi-tasse when the ladies have gone into the drawing-room. De Boodle voted a character. Next thing, Bridge Whist party. Everybody there. Society a good winner. The De Boodles magnificent losers. Popularity cinched. Next, yachting ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... happy there, in that cozy little parlor, with its sunny bow window full of flowers, and its bright Lehigh fire, and softly cushioned chairs; that cozy parlor, where the little round table, with its snowy cloth, had been so often spread; and the fragrant coffee, and delicate tea-biscuit, and racy newspaper had been so often discussed; where John, in his slippers and dressing-gown, with his dark hair pushed off his broad forehead, read to us page after page of some favorite author, while ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... of me fat," he answered, with his jolly laugh, speaking in that racy brogue which sounded like music, it being so long since I had heard it. "Sure, Oi've marched oop from the coast the ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... magnificent volumes of indexes of Kervyn de Lettenhove's complete edition (vols. XX.-XXV.) are still of immense use, though his text and comments are inferior to those of Luce, Froissart's spirit may well be caught in Lord Berners's racy English translation (Tudor Translations), or in G.C. Macaulay's useful abridgment. The three redactions of Froissart's first book (from 1327 to 1373-1377), which is all that concerns our period, have been clearly distinguished by Luce. (1) The first edition, written ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... local colour and loss of effect in the grouping of the characters is more than compensated for by the racy piquancy of Dick Marston's vernacular, and the aspect, unrivalled in Australian literature, which his account affords of bushranging life from the bushranger's own point of view. In the truth with which ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... passed out with his measuring-stick into the bright sunlight. And there stood, drawing deep breaths of the racy September air, and filling his eyes almost to overflowing with the magic beauty ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... intensified, and the stove in the parlor attracted every one. A San Francisco lady, much "got up" in paint, emerald green velvet, Brussels lace, and diamonds, rattled continuously for the amusement of the company, giving descriptions of persons and scenes in a racy Western twang, without the slightest scruple as to what she said. In a few years Tahoe will be inundated in summer with similar vulgarity, owing to its easiness of access. I sustained the reputation which our country-women bear in America ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Jack' used to come and dine and sleep at my old home to keep his birthday, in company with my father and mother. At such times we as children used to come down to dessert to hear him tell stories in his racy way of Katerfelto, of long gallops over Exmoor after the stag, or of hard runs after the little 'red rover' with ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... of Froude's style is not obscure. Too original to be an imitator, he was in his handling of English an apt pupil of Newman. There is the same ease, the same grace, the same lightness of elastic strength. Froude, like Newman, can pass from racy, colloquial vernacular, the talk of educated men who understand each other, to heights of genuine eloquence, where the resources of our grand old English tongue are drawn out to the full. His vocabulary was large and various. He was familiar with every device of rhetoric. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... book and never lacking in interest. It will be an inspiration for American girls to read its chapters. She gives graphic pictures. The volume contains several fine portraits. The book is racy and pleasing, whether the reader agrees with the author in ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... in another moment, because some profane eye had looked at them too closely, or some intruder had cast a shadow on their mirth, the sylvan pageant had utterly disappeared. If a few of the merry-makers lingered among the trees, they had hidden their racy peculiarities under the garb and aspect of ordinary people, and sheltered themselves in the weary commonplace of daily life. Just an instant before it was Arcadia and the Golden Age. The spell being ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a life of Charlotte Bronte. But he holds his place in the front rank of recent essayists by the three 'Obiter Dicta' and 'Res Judicatae' volumes of manly, luminous, penetrating essays, full of racy humor and sudden wit; of a generous appreciativeness that seeks always for the vital principle which gave the writer his hold on men; still more, of a warm humanity and a sure instinct for all the higher and finer things of the spirit which never ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... at every barn-door in the vast flat, featureless fields of yellow stubble, rolling sometimes over a muddy, brown river, and skirting now and then a welcome wooded cleft in the monotony of the landscape. The scenes at those barn-doors were full of the picturesque and of the racy. A farmer with a gun and a brace of rabbits and a dog leaping up at them, while two young women talked to or at the farmer from a distance; a fat little German girl in a Scotch frock, cleaning outside windows with the absorbed seriousness of a grandmother; a group of boys dividing their ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... will embrace, in addition to vigorous and fearless comments on the events of the times, genial gossip with the reader on all current topics, and also devote abundant space to those racy specimens of American wit and humor, without which there can be no perfect exposition of our national character. Among those who will contribute regularly to this department may be mentioned the name of CHARLES F. BROWNE ("Artemus Ward"), from whom we have promised ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... followed in this volume is that of Mr. Isaac Foulkes' edition, but recourse has also been had to the original edition for the purpose of comparison. The only translation into English hitherto has been that of George Borrow, published in London in 1860, and written in that charming and racy style which characterises his other and better known works. He has, however, fallen into many errors, which were only natural, seeing that the Visions abound in colloquial words and phrases, and in idiomatic forms of expression which ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... acquiring additional zest from the prepossessions of exile and the longing for home. And when the polished singer of the King's "Quhair" found himself again in his native land he seems to have burst forth with the most genuine impulse into the broad fun, rustical and natural and racy of the soil, which perhaps was more congenial to his Scottish audience. "Peblis to the Play" and "Christis Kirk on the Green" are poems full of the very breath of rural life and the rude yet joyous meetings of the country folk at kirk and market, which with wonderfully little difference of sentiment ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... The structure of the verse, sometimes so stately and majestic, is frequently disfigured by the commonest faults; yet the breath of a lofty purpose has been breathed upon every page. The personality of the author never pierces through his theme. The language is fresh, racy, vigorous, and utterly free from the impress of modern masters: much of it might have been written ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... whom these racy descriptions appeal, it is suggested that they familiarize themselves with the "Reprinted Pieces," edited by Charles Dickens the younger, and published in New York in 1896, a much more complete edition, with explanatory ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... has permeated his narrative, giving it the stamp of originality. No man whose training had been gained wholly in the best schools of Germany, France, or England could have written those books. A training racy of the soil was needed. "A practical knowledge," wrote Niebuhr, "must support historical jurisprudence, and if any one has got that he can easily master all scholastic speculations." A man's knowledge of everyday life in some way fits him for a certain field of historical study—in ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... there exist forty-three pages by Duerer himself and eight by Cranach at Munich, and at Besancon thirty-five pages by Burgkmair, Altdorfer, Baldung Grien, and Hans Duerer. Marvellously deft and light-handed as are Duerer's freehand arabesques, embellished by racy sketches of which these borders consist, they are nevertheless touched with a like unsatisfactory character with the other works undertaken for Maximilian, and are almost as far removed from the spirit and performance of the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... deliverance is held to exist. We shall see enough of the religious melancholy in a future lecture; but melancholy, according to our ordinary use of language, forfeits all title to be called religious when, in Marcus Aurelius's racy words, the sufferer simply lies kicking and screaming after the fashion of a sacrificed pig. The mood of a Schopenhauer or a Nietzsche—and in a less degree one may sometimes say the same of our own sad Carlyle—though often an ennobling sadness, is almost as often only ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... interests. You see, my mother—father died ten years before she did—my mother, being dotty about the innate superiority of the male, left me in control of practically everything, and I do as well by it as the more important occupation of farming will permit. Which completes the racy ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... Street there were Salvation Army bands and spectrum-shawled old ladies on door-steps and sugary, sticky candy in the grimy hands of shiny-haired children—and the late sun striking down on the sides of the tall tenements. All very rich and racy and savory, like a dish by a provident French chef that one could not help enjoying, even though one knew that the ingredients were ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of whom they were immensely proud. These people, before he has done with them, get hold of our sympathies, while the author keeps perennially fresh his enjoyment of human follies. His rustics do not talk with elaborate humor, nor are they amiable, but they are racy of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Matthew Grant, who landed in 1630 and was Surveyor of Connecticut for over forty years. Grant's mother was one of the Simpsons who had been Pennsylvanians for several generations. His family was therefore as racy of the North as Lee's was of the South. His great-grandfather and great-granduncle, Noah and Solomon Grant, held British commissions during the final French-and-Indian or Seven Years' War (1756-63) when both were killed in the same campaign. His grandfather Noah served all ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... beam, now heaping praise. The spirited talk, flying thus helter-skelter through the gamut of opinion, went forward chiefly in German, which the foreigners of the party spoke with various accents, but glibly enough; only now and then did one of them spring over to his mother-tongue, to fetch a racy idiom ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... watching her disapprovingly in a corner of the car. The girl was of a type as yet not common in Western Canada, reserved, quietly imperious, and annoyingly free from any manifestation of enthusiasm. She had also listened languidly to their most racy stories with a somewhat tired look in ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... plates, which may be called companions; racy and good are they, and of one vintage. We are not quite satisfied with either face or figure of the maiden in the "Roman Vintage." Hers is not a face of feeling; nay, we would almost beg Mr Severn's pardon, and pronounce her a bit of a fool. The "Neapolitan" is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Armstrong," in which her Ishmael hand fell heavily on the narrow-mindedness of the manufacturing class—anticipating, in some degree, Dickens's "Hard Times." "One Fault," a satire upon romantic exaggeration; and the coarse, but clever "Widow Barnaby," a racy history of the troubles of a vulgar-genteel bourgeoise in search of a second husband, were published in 1839; and in the following year appeared its sequel, "The Widow Married," which is quite as coarse as its predecessor, but not so amusing. With indefatigable pen she produced, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... occupation the heads of the hostess and the guest approached each other, the glowing light playing cheerily on the countenance of each, there was an honest simplicity in the picture that would have merited the racy and vigorous genius of a Cruikshank. As soon as the Promethean spark had been fully communicated to the lady's tube, Mrs. Lobkins, still possessed by the gloomy idea she ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... heart of the boulevard, where its main entrance was a blaze of light, among the fashionable restaurants and select clubs,—a theatre to which small parties used to adjourn after a choice dinner to hear an act or two of something racy, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most popular of all Parisian play-houses, with no well-defined speciality but providing a little of all sorts, from the spectacular fairy-play which exhibits the women in scant attire, to the great modern drama which does ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... inferred, from his language—to a retired sea-captain, whom I disturbed in his nap to inquire whether he let lodgings. As it happened, he didn't. Then (as I very nearly went back and told him) what right had he to sport a brass plate? However, I got some good racy dialogue for the Nautical ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... pardon, sir; but that story of yours was particularly rich. He—he! Particularly racy,' said he. 'I tell you, sir, I took you wholly! I SMOKED you! I believe you and I, sir, if we had a chance to talk, would find we had a good many opinions in common. Here is the "Blue Bell," a very comfortable place. They draw good ale, sir. Would you be so condescending as to share a pot ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anecdote, and could describe graphically the men he had met, the orators he had heard, the occasions of importance where he had been an interested spectator. His conversation was delightfully fresh and racy because of the vividness of the original impressions, the unusual force of the ideas which were the copies of these impressions, and the fine artistic sense which enabled him to determine at once what points should be omitted, and ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... I think, that Arthur's grave and humorous ways attracted her. He, when at his best, was a racy and paradoxical talker—with that natural tinge of veiled melancholy or cynicism half-suspected which is so fascinating, as seeming to imply a "past," a history. He ventured to speak to her more than once about her tendency ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... acquired, perhaps from his lexicographical studies, a great command of homely and colloquial English; the words and phrases by which he frequently represents rather than construes Erasmus' text have perhaps in many instances not less piquancy than the original. Thus his translation, as a piece of racy English, has a certain independent value of its own, and may be read with interest even by those who are familiar ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... Cambrensis, Hist. Irel. c. 2, makes Roanus survive and tell the tale of Partholan to S. Patrick. He is the Caoilte mac Ronan of other tales, a survivor of the Fians, who held many racy dialogues with the Saint. Keating abuses Giraldus for equating Roanus with Finntain in his "lying history," and for calling him Roanus instead of Ronanus, a mistake in which he, "the guide bull of the herd," is ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... cordially endorse: 'No one, who has his faculties in a healthy condition, can read them and not feel convinced that they are the productions of a superior and highly gifted mind. They not only smack strongly of what all true men love, genuine humor; rich, racy, glorious humor; at which you may indulge in an honest outbreak of laughter, and not feel ashamed afterward because you have thrown away good mirth on a pitiful jest; but when you have laughed your fill, if you choose to look beneath ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... all my tragic heritage; no pale-faced and partially poisoned mother whose suicidal instincts have cursed me with the temptations of the artistic temperament. I regret that there was nothing in the range of our family much more racy than a remote and mildly impecunious uncle; and that I cannot do my duty as a true modern, by cursing everybody who made me whatever I am. I am not clear about what that is; but I am pretty sure that most of it is my own fault. And I am compelled ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... from childhood so accustomed to the sea, and the relish of salt breezes, and the racy dance of little waves that crowd on one another, and the tidal delivery of delightful rubbish, that to fail of seeing the many works and plays and constant variance of her never wearying or weary friend was more than she could long put up with. She called ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... romances, Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton (the former of which was handled and rehandled from age to age, moralised, curtailed, lengthened, and hashed up in every form); of the brilliant and vigorous Richard Coeur-de-Lion; of the less racy Charlemagne romances in English; of the Seven Wise Masters, brought from the East and naturalised all over Europe; of the delightful love story of Florice and Blancheflour; of that powerful and pathetic legend ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... casks of various sizes, most of which would, on being touched, have given, by their ringing sound, assurance of their emptiness. In bins, at one extremity of the cellar, were a number of bottles, whose thick mantle of dust and cobwebs spoke volumes for the ripe and racy nature of their contents. A large chest of cedar-wood stood in the innermost nook of the cellar, with raised lid, disclosing a quantity of cigars, worm-eaten and musty from extreme age. In the massive wall, forming one end of the vault, and which was in fact ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... casually alluded to the flash song of Jerry Juniper, I may, perhaps, be allowed to make a few observations upon this branch of versification. It is somewhat curious, with a dialect so racy, idiomatic, and plastic as our own cant, that its metrical capabilities should have been so little essayed. The French have numerous chansons d'argot, ranging from the time of Charles Bourdigne and Villon down ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Ogram as self-assertion—beware the lash! From time to time she will permit herself a phrase or an exclamation which reminds one that her birth was not precisely aristocratic; but don't imagine that anyone else is allowed to use a too racy vernacular; you must guard your expressions, and the choicer they are the better she ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... upon me by various other books, and especially by Fra Paolo Sarpi's "History of the Council of Trent," probably the most racy and pungent piece of ecclesiastical history ever written; and though I also read as antidotes the history of the Council by Pallavicini, and copious extracts from Bossuet, Archbishop Spalding, and Balmez, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... if abusive and less cogent in reasoning, as well as less relieved by any sparkle of wit or racy anecdote than those of Alesius, are certainly written in a more easy and flowing Latin style, and, in that respect at least, the Scottish prelates had no reason to be ashamed of the champion who had volunteered his services in their cause. Nor were they wanting in ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... hand, Dr. Wallis, Professor of Geometry, and the famous Dr. South, published treatises against Dr. Sherlock, which, while avoiding the Scylla of Tritheism, ran dangerously near to the Charybdis of Sabellianism. Like all his writings, South's treatise was racy, but violently abusive, and such irritation and acrimony were engendered, that the Royal authority was at last exercised in restraining each party from introducing novel opinions, and requiring them to adhere to such explications only as had already received the sanction ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... haunted the greenroom of the opera. He had two daughters, recently married, before whom he repeated the most piquant witticisms of Voltaire, and the most improper stories of Tallemant de Reaux; and consequently both promised to afford the scandalmongers a series of racy anecdotes, as their ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... the dinner brought a hush of expectancy over the entire company by relating a series of experiences he had been privileged to share with a "psychic" some years before. He told of his mystification with a laugh in his eyes and with racy vigor of tongue, but Serviss, newly alive to the topic, could not but marvel at the intensity of interest manifested by every soul present. "Disguise it as we may," said the narrator, "this question of the life beyond the grave is chief of ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... of an author—you are pleased with them, and you wish to become acquainted with the man. You anticipate great pleasure—you expect from his lips, in impromptu, the same racy remarks, the same chain of reasoning, the same life and vigour which have cost him so many hours of labour and reflection, or which have been elicited in his happiest moods, and this from a person who comes, perhaps, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Vaughan omitted to give us a few racy lines on Sir Matthew Hale's "Divine Contemplations of the Magnet," Sir Kenelm Digby's "Weapon-Salve," and Valentine Greatrake's "Magnetic Cures"? He should have told the world a little, too, about the strange phenomenon of the Jesuit Kircher, in whom Popery attempted to recover the very ground ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... accomplished scoundrel within. But in his conversation there was no trace of evil; nothing equivocal; he studiously shunned an indelicacy, never swore, and chiefly abounded in passing puns and witticisms, varied with humorous contrasts between ship and shore life, and many agreeable and racy anecdotes, very tastefully narrated. In short—in a merely psychological point of view, at least—he was a charming blackleg. Ashore, such a man might have been an irreproachable mercantile ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... supposed to have been written before Paris in 1870-71 by a German soldier who had turned his thoughts to his home and children in the far-off Fatherland. The second deals with British folk-lore, and is racy of the soil. Both works are full of capital illustrations. He has, moreover, read He Went for a Soldier, the WYNTER Annual of JOHN STRANGE of that ilk. But what had the soldier done, that "he" should "go for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... contains very few quartos. When he collected his works in three volumes in 1710, he apparently destroyed (at least he did not list) the earlier editions of his plays in quarto. He loved to write such ballads as the racy "Jack French-Man's Defeat," but he never recognized these by including them in his book list or in his collected works; nor did he list his youthful novel Incognita (1691), if indeed he had a copy of it. Such omissions were later made ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... town; at the seaside they are the height of fashion. And as it is with dress so it is with speech. The "respectable" classes are apt to rob language of its savor, clipping and trimming it like the trees in a Dutch garden. You must go to the common, unrespectable classes for racy vigor of tongue. They avoid circumlocutions, eschew diffuseness, go straight to the point, and prefer concrete to abstract expressions. They don't speak of a foolish man, they call him a fool; a cowardly talebearer they call a sneak; and so on to the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... picturesque allegories of Douglas, and the terse sense and racy humour of Dunbar, delighted me much. As I had to con my way slowly amid the difficulties of a language which was no longer that spoken by my country-folk, I felt as if I were creating the sense which I found; it came gradually out like some fossil of the rock, from ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... in the cars are well worth a traveller's attention. They are very frequently on politics, but often one hears stories such as the world has become familiarised with from the early pages of Barnum's Autobiography, abounding in racy anecdote, broad humour, and cunning imposition. At Erie we changed cars, and I saw numerous emigrants sitting on large blue boxes, looking disconsolately about them; the Irish physiognomy being the most predominant. They are generally so dirty that they travel by themselves in a partially ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... larger, coarser, stronger—much more racy and democratic—than the ideal we are familiar with in current literature, and upon which our culture is largely based. He applies the democratic spirit not only to the material of poetry,—excluding all the old stock themes of love and war, lords ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... greatly relieved. "I want a book of twenty pages. Write anything you like, only bring the pickles in on each page. You know the style. Twenty blood-curdling ballads, or Aesop's fables, or something the public's bound to read. Something racy, mind, and all ending in the pickle. It's a good thing, so you needn't be afraid of overdoing it. You shall have a bob a page, money down, or twenty-five bob for the lot if you let me have it this time to- morrow. Remember, nothing meek and mild. Lay it on thick. They're the best thing going, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Watch Dog of the Treasury." Tom Corwin, of the same State, with a portly figure, swarthy complexion, and wonderful facial expression, and an inexhaustible flow of wit, who was not a buffoon, but a gentleman whose humor was natural, racy, and chaste. Gulian C. Verplanck and Thomas J. Oakley, two members of the New York bar, who represented that city, were statesmen rather than politicians. John Chambers, of Kentucky, a gigantic economist, was ever ready to reform small expenditures and willing to overlook large ones. And then ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... preach, and thus accomplish an immediate good and lay the foundation for the more permanent church and school. The Association has about twenty such stations on the Cheyenne and other rivers in Dakota. One of the teachers from Oahe gives a racy sketch of a trip among some of the out-stations. We make room for a large extract, regretting that we have ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... it is. But it isn't out of the paper's line. I tell you that case is going to make a sensation. She's pretty as a picture. Been married only six months, and it seems to be a dead sure thing that she poisoned her husband. That trial's going to make racy reading, especially if they bring in ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... town and a hillside village which is not a—not a great village; she is quite marvellously delightful by her power of assimilating the little she can read and observe, not merely of transmuting it into something personal and racy, but (what is much more surprising) of being modified harmoniously by its assimilation; her rich and unexpected mind putting forth even richer and more unexpected details. Whereas think of Tom, Dick, or Harry, their natural good parts watered down with other folks' notions, their imagination ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... 16. Coined in the early 1960s to replace earlier 'sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and later adopted by ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... ship's deck, so that it was now trim and orderly in place of being littered over with lumber as previously—the active boatswain helping one here, encouraging another there, and making all laugh occasionally with some racy joke, that seemed to lighten their labour greatly and cause them to set to their task with redoubled vigour.—"It's wonderful ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the violin. Spohr was a man of immense self-assertion, and believed in the greatness of his own musical genius as a composer in the higher domain of his art. His "Autobiography," one of the most fresh, racy, and interesting works of the kind ever written, is full of varied illustrations of what Chorley stigmatizes his "bovine self-conceit." His fecund production of symphony, oratorio, and opera, as well as of the more elaborate forms of chamber music, for a period of forty years ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... flamed with gin-palaces; a multitude were sauntering in the mild though tainted air; bargaining, blaspheming, drinking, wrangling: and varying their business and their potations, their fierce strife and their impious irreverence, with flashes of rich humour, gleams of native wit, and racy ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... grandmother, out of which he told their fortunes; with the musical instruments of others; with their carefully hidden dice and playing-cards, worn or soiled by the fingers of the older gamesters who had discarded them. Like their elders, they read eagerly, in racy, new translations, old Greek and Latin books, with a delightful shudder at the wanton paganism. It was a new element of confusion in the presentment of that miniature world. The classical enthusiasm laid hold ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... too long to quote, but it is written in Miss Edgeworth's most racy and delightful ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... one cannot be altogether sure. The English agent at Paris wrote that they were 'lewd strumpets gathered up by the officers of the city,' and even the saintly Mere Marie de l'Incarnation confessed that there was beaucoup de canaille among them. La Hontan has left us a racy picture of their arrival and their distribution among the rustic swains of the colony, who scrimmaged for points of vantage when boatloads of women came ashore from the ships. [Footnote: Another view will be found in The Great Intendant ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... finished a most racy story concerning his first introduction to a certain countess. Cooper had listened in silence, but when Mike turned at the end of his tale and asked him what he thought of his conduct, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... dandiest little affair I ever did see," said Frank half enviously. "Just big enough for two of us." He glanced over to the boy-size automobile standing in the shade. It was a long, racy looking toy, closer to the ground than a motorcycle, but evidently equipped with a good-sized engine. "Where did ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... serious, for wherever a graver tone threatens to direct the action some absurd character or incident is hastily introduced to save the situation. Regarded as such, it cannot be said to be either successful or wholly unsuccessful. The opening scene is certainly one of the most racy and homely Inductions to be found in dramatic literature, while one or two of the other scenes, though they make poor reading, are calculated to rouse laughter when acted; the lower characters, at least, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... phenomenally acute, and much which to most of us would be unperceived or meaningless he reads as if it were an open book. Best of all, he has the power of imparting his enjoyment, and what he writes is full of outdoor fragrance, racy, piquant, and individual. His snap and vivacity are wholly unartificial. They are a part of the man—a man full of imagination and sensitiveness, a philosopher, a humorist, a hater of shams and pretension. The tenor of his life changes little from year to year, his affections ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... Martineau at her country home as well as at her house in town. As we were obliged to converse with her through an ear trumpet, we left her to do most of the talking. She gave us many amusing experiences of her travels in America, and her comments on the London Convention were rich and racy. She was not an attractive woman in either manner or appearance, though considered great and good by ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... ever after commit either a mean or a bad action. We are therefore doubly thankful to Emerson, both for what he says of England, and for what he relates of Carlyle, whose independent speech upon all subjects is one of his chief charms. He reads "Blackwood," for example, and has enjoyed many a racy, vigorous article in its pages; but it does not satisfy him, and he calls it "Sand Magazine." "Fraser's" is a little better, but not good enough to be worthy of a higher nomenclature than "Mud Magazine." Excessive praise of any one's talents drives him into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... accepted as synonymous with literary honesty and courage. There is certainly no lack of either about this idyll of Elizabeth Kemp of the lissome limbs and auburn hair. The story pursues its way, and one sees the soul of a woman shining clearly through the racy dialect and frolics of the Chingford beano, the rueful futility of faithful Thomas and the engaging callousness of ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... of Will and John, named for the two uncles, would prove racy reading through many chapters. "The Twins" were the father's text for spicy stories galore many years before their death. From the first, they were "two young sinners." They both had active minds— overactive in devising deviltry. Mischievous as little fellows, never punished, practically ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... her parentage. As Walpole sketched the society of Rome, Atlee, who had cultivated the gift of listening fully as much as that of talking, knew where to seem interested by the views of life thrown out, and where to show a racy enjoyment of the little humoristic bits of description which the other was rather proud of his skill in deploying; and as Atlee always appeared so conversant with the family history of the people they were discussing, Walpole spoke ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... others watched by the bed of Death. John Barton had revived to fitful intelligence. He spoke at times with even something of his former energy; and in the racy Lancashire dialect he had always ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of delicate, strangely compounded sandwiches, and listening to an endless flow of somewhat startlingly frank personalities from the magnetic mistress of the house. Sylvia and Jermain did not talk much on these occasions. They listened with edification to the racy remarks of their hostess, voicing that theoretical "broadness" of opinion as to the conduct of life which, quite as much as the perfume which she always used, was a specialty of her provocative personality; they spoke now and then, to be sure, as she drew them into conversation, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... other day, "a true one," that I treasured for you as racy, as characteristic of slavery and human nature. A most notoriously atrocious, dissolute, hellish slave-owner died, and one of his slaves—an old woman—said to a lady, "Massa prayed God so to forgive him! Oh, how he prayed! And I am afraid God heard him; ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... 1701; which contains a matchless series, in 154 vols., of the Works of Daniel De Foe, whom Coleridge was inclined to rank higher than Addison for his humour and as a writer of racy vigorous English. ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... the duty of the Clerk of the Acts shows the importance of the office, and the statement that if the clerk is not fitted to act as a commissioner he is a blockhead and unfit for his employment is particularly racy, and not quite the form of expression one would expect to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... for the purpose which they were intended to serve, if their writers had been more fanciful and imaginative, or less intent upon what they had to say than upon the manner of saying it. But if not extremely poetical, they are extremely national, and racy of the soil; and some of them are certain to live as long as the language which produced them. For the convenience of reference and consultation they have been arranged chronologically; beginning with the ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... does. His remarks on Oken and Owen, and his quotations from Dr. Clarke's admirable paper on the Development of the Foetus, in the Cambridge Philosophical Transactions, we would recommend to our medical friends. The very confusion of Sedgwick is the free outcome of a deep and racy nature; it puts us in mind of what happened, when an Englishman was looking with astonishment and disgust at a Scotchman eating a singed sheep's head, and was asked by the eater what he thought of that dish? "Dish, sir, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Harper; his work, indeed, in quantity, considerably exceeds Mr. Abbey's. He is the observer of the immediate, as Mr. Abbey is that of the considerably removed, and the conditions he asks us to accept are less expensive to the imagination than those of his colleague. He is, in short, the vigorous, racy prosateur of that human comedy of which Mr. Abbey is the poet. He illustrates the modern sketch of travel, the modern tale—the poor little "quiet," psychological, conversational modern tale, which I often think the artist invited to represent it to the eye must hate, unless he be ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James |
