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Sprightly   Listen
adjective
Sprightly  adj.  (compar. sprightlier; superl. sprightliest)  Sprightlike, or spiritlike; lively; brisk; animated; vigorous; airy; gay; as, a sprightly youth; a sprightly air; a sprightly dance. "Sprightly wit and love inspires." "The sprightly Sylvia trips along the green."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sprightly" Quotes from Famous Books



... the latter tongue with fluency. The very learned Maestro Pietro Vettori, when he joined the household of the Duke as teacher of Greek and philosophy to Don Francesco, was greatly struck by the young girl's attainments, and so charmed was he by her sprightly manner, that he obtained permission for her to join her ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... of this gay climate were often seen on an evening, when the day's labour was done, dancing in groups on the margin of the river. Their sprightly melodies, debonnaire steps, the fanciful figure of their dances, with the tasteful and capricious manner in which the girls adjusted their simple dress, gave a character to the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... simplicity reigned. Even the heavy, loutish Tommies and Jacks, who had exasperated her by their dense stupidity that morning, were only subjects for a humorous anecdote or two, with little effective and sprightly touches which made Cedric throw back his head with a boyish laugh. But Malcolm never raised his eyes from his plate. To him Elizabeth's graphic descriptions were far from amusing. He was thankful when the meal was over and they were ready to set out ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... artillerymen and cavalrymen ate, holding their reins under their arms, while their officers stood around some temporary table, served by canteen men of the united divisions. Tiny columns of blue smoke rose where coffee was making, and everywhere were the swift movement and sprightly good-fellowship in which the soldier feels himself in his ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa

... throats. A little flock of these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out of my woodpile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day day day, or more rarely, in spring-like days, a wiry summery phe-be from the woodside. They were so familiar that at length one alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying in, and pecked at the sticks without fear. I once had ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... back corner of the house, and heard the sprightly talk of Mrs. Randolph and the merry laugh of the daughter, as her aunt bade them welcome, and she knew they were being conducted to the upper rooms that had been prepared with such thoughtful ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... the least comprehending the reason for the phenomenon, Mrs. Wesley Elliot experienced a singular depression of spirit. Of course she was glad poor dear Ellen was to be happy. She strove to infuse a sprightly satisfaction into her tone and manner ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... the street, one may peer through this portal into an avenue of the forbidden city. There is an exciting glimpse of greensward, flowering shrubbery, roses, vines, and a vista of the ends of enormous structures painted yellow. And this avenue is sprightly with the passing of enviable persons who are rightly there, some in alien garb, some in the duller uniform of the humble artisan, some in the pressed and garnished ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... the old lady. The whisper had a sprightly yet mysterious tone in it; the withered fingers were put out as if to twitch the passing skirt as the ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... margins becoming elevated, and divided into eight lobes. It is, in fact, a pile of cup-shaped pieces, very loosely connected together. A little later, these pieces free themselves successively, and the sedate polype disappears in a company of sprightly young medusae. These beings, indeed, still differ in some respects from the adult animal; but the differences gradually vanish, and we have the perfect jelly-fish as the final result of this extraordinary ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... sprightly journey. The train made its accustomed detour through West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia before getting down to business, and the two voyagers felt a personal hatred of the brakemen who permitted passengers from these ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... Indian life by an author who combined abundant personal experience with keen observation, sprightly temper, and delightful humour. "Tom Cringle's Log" has been many times reprinted, and has lost nothing of its popularity and power ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... captain Baudin, whom we daily expected to meet, according to what he had said at Port Jackson. Had the consequences affected ourselves alone, the time of our departure was so near that I should have been glad to have kept Woga; for he was a sprightly lad, whom our treatment would soon have reconciled, and in any future intercourse with his countrymen, as also in furnishing information upon many interesting points, he might have been of service; but for the above reason, and that it was not altogether just to do otherwise, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... counter in Crenshaw's store at Balaam's Cross Roads, where the heavy odor of black molasses battled with the sprightly smell of salt fish. The merchant held the Scratch Hiller in no small esteem. Their intimacy was of long standing, for the Yancys going down and the Crenshaws coming up had for a brief space flourished on the same social ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... inclined to corpulence; his limbs were too heavy for exact proportion; the traces of a severe smallpox disfigured features and a countenance which, when they were not animated by social pleasure, were rather saturnine than sprightly; a stoop in the shoulders, and the then professional appendage—a large full-bottomed wig—gave at that early period of life an appearance of nearly twice the years he bore. Florid health and the earnest of good humour, a funny smile on entering a room and ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... softened with silky Turkish rugs and paintings of blue dawn amid the dunes, were tables of black-and-white china, sports hats, and Swiss toys, which the Grimsby summer colony meekly bought at the suggestion of the sprightly Miss Mitchin. ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... as the stars that shine And twinkle on the Milky Way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of the bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... conversation of ladies, it is sufficient that it would lay a restraint upon those odious topics of immodesty and indecencies, into which the rudeness of our northern genius is so apt to fall. And, therefore, it is observable in those sprightly gentlemen about the town, who are so very dexterous at entertaining a vizard mask in the park or the playhouse, that, in the company of ladies of virtue and honour, they are silent and disconcerted, and out of ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift

... set trash of phrase Ineffably—legitimately vile, That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile,— Nor even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil, That turns and turns to give the world a notion Of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... about 1890 that the sprightly organization known as the Whitechapel Club came into existence in Chicago. Moses P. Handy was an adopted son of the same period. He had come on from Philadelphia and was trying to introduce the custom ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... sprightly nod at the surgeon, "since we've undertaken to cure the captain, the most sensible thing for us to do IS to cure him. You shall prescribe when and how the doses of society are to be administered." Then to Lane, "Not another ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... the people, but Pair had done wonders by way of civilising her. She had learned English, and prattled it with an accent so quaint and sprightly as to give point to her otherwise perhaps somewhat commonplace observations. She was fond of reading; she could play a little; she was an excellent housewife, and generally a very good-natured and quite presentable little person. She was ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... you never coming?" some one called, and a sprightly brunette appeared for an instant on the first landing, but vanished quickly at sight ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... benches of the Hope, or under the thatched roof of the Rose, dazzled the eyes of the multitude. The fascination of sex was called in to aid the fascination of art: and the young spectator saw, with emotions unknown to the contemporaries of Shakspeare and Johnson, tender and sprightly heroines personated by lovely women. From the day on which the theatres were reopened they became seminaries of vice; and the evil propagated itself. The profligacy of the representations soon drove away sober people. The frivolous ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... get the papers. In a pretended game of romps, she threw her shawl over his head, and secured the prize. She hastened with the papers to her friends, who read them with deep interest, after the windows were carefully closed. When news came of Burgoyne's surrender, the sprightly girl, not daring to give vent openly to her exultation, put her head up the chimney and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... out" because the officers respected the father's long years of faithful service and did not want to humiliate him. He knew that his boy flew high occasionally, but that was because he was "jess nachally sprightly and full o' devilment." No one could deny that Private Wilson was one of the finest animals, physically, that ever wore the uniform; or that he had gained a wide reputation among his comrades and the Filipinos on account of his terrible abilities in a hand-to-hand engagement. It was this very ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... talk and laughter. No sense of disorder or noise, but it was just jolly. Mr. Benjamin at one end of the long table beamed at Mrs. Benjamin at the other end. They both played a part in the sprightly give-and-take of the children. It was like a happy family. Isabelle was silent, taking note ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... to believe, that by the light of reason we could know and understand all the moral truths which we have been taught by revelation; we forget that revelation has illuminated our reason and taught it how to see and understand.—Just as well might the sprightly youth refuse to acknowledge that its mother learned it to walk, and ever gave it nourishment and strength to perform the exercise, and allege that it can walk as well as she can. As well might the learned graduate refuse ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... have not time and patience to wade through a long story will find here many pithy and sprightly tales, each sharply hitting some social absurdity or social vice. We recommend the book heartily after having read the three chapters on 'Taking a Newspaper.' If all the rest are as sensible and interesting as these, and doubtless they are, the book is well ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... even Thackeray himself is now and then artificial in Esmond, and the vulgarity of Yellowplush at last becomes fatiguing. Now Trollope reproduces for us that simplicity, unity, and ease of Jane Austen, whose facile grace flows on like the sprightly talk of a charming woman, mistress of herself and sure of her hearers. This uniform ease, of course, goes with the absence of all the greatest qualities of style; absence of any passion, poetry, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... heavy—there is scarcely a star to be seen," ejaculated John Hardy, who was on the driver's seat with a sprightly girl of nineteen for his companion. "What'll you bet the snow catches us ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... "What—a Sisters Sprightly Act? Have a little shame, Cecilia. What will Christopher think when he sees his mother in a ballet skirt, kicking about all over ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various

... difficulty restrained his spirited horses while the little party arranged themselves for a winter ride. Both the ladies were young, and the gentleman's anxious and almost tender solicitude for one of them seemed hardly warranted by her blooming cheeks and sprightly movements. A close observer might soon suspect that his assiduous attentions were caused by a malady of his own rather than by indisposition ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... Meanwhile—for there is plenty of time until then—we should be least inclined to deck ourselves out in such florid and fringed moral verbiage; our whole former work has just made us sick of this taste and its sprightly exuberance. They are beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive words: honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, heroism of the truthful—there is something in them that makes one's heart swell with ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... proceeded to do with might and main. The sprightly buzz suddenly ceased as the great folds of the monster began to squirm and writhe—Perk lifted his pole and put in another blow for ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... of surprise that, notwithstanding his sprightly wit, he never exposed by his raillery those vague, incoherent, and noisy discourses, those rash censures, ignorant decisions, coarse jests, and all that empty jingle of words which at Babylon went by the name of conversation. He had learned, in the first book of Zoroaster, that self love ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... very kind to me even then, and I took to her very much. I used to admire her bright eyes and her beautiful and very abundant dark hair, which was always exceedingly glossy, and her lovely throat, which was the whitest possible—also her sprightly ways, for she was very ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... Charles Morgan, a physician of some standing, given her for a husband. She continued to write. Her work on France made some noise, on account of its having been prohibited by the French government; and her subsequent book on Italy, if not profound, was at least sprightly. Her Irish novels were, however, her best productions. There is considerable observation, and some feeling, displayed in them. Her knowledge of Irish society is very exact, and her pictures of it very slightly exaggerated. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... will not do to attribute these crises to the unstable character of the fiery Frenchman, nor can the difficulty be disposed of by saying that a French minister will create a crisis for the sake of a pleasing bon mot or a sprightly paradox. A crisis supposes something outside of, or above, or beyond the ordinary, but French ministerial crises have become so common that they are the laughingstock of the nations, and may be said to ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... an instant, on his arm, and looked up at him with an agitated face, as if she would have told him something. Next moment, she was down upon her knees before the basket; speaking in a sprightly voice, and busy with ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... vein he wrote, with the firm purpose and the distinct thought visible under the sparkle. Before the regiment left Washington, as he has recorded, he said good-bye and went down the bay to Fortress Monroe. Of his unshrinking and sprightly industry, his good head, his warm heart, and cool hand, as a soldier, General Butler has given precious testimony to his family. "I loved him as a brother," the General writes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... harmonise with the soft dawning of the day! He goes on till the twinkling sun-beams begin to tell him that his notes no longer accord with the rising scene. Up starts the lark, and with him a variety of sprightly songsters, whose lively notes are in perfect correspondence with the gaiety of the morning. The general warbling continues, with now and then an interruption by the transient croak of the raven, the scream of the jay, or the pert chattering ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... heathen. I'll be only too grateful to be taught better," murmured the subdued voice that was so strangely unlike Gipsy's usual sprightly tones. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... best music pupils in the school. She had a good crisp touch and considerable execution, and led off the concert with a sprightly tarantella. A violin solo followed, by Sibyl Lee, a member of V.b., who was rather nervous, but acquitted herself fairly well ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... group fell back, and George, blinking, radiant, and abashed, found himself in the arms of an exceedingly sprightly and youthful dame, with pale, frizzled hair, and ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... time to talk of this ag'in. You mustn't be down hearted, Hurry, for Judith is a sprightly young woman, and she has a quick reason; she knows that the credit of her father's rifle is safer in my hands, than it can possibly be in yourn; and, therefore, you mustn't be down hearted. In other matters, more to your liking, too, you'll find ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... Mrs. Cricket, with sprightly Miss Keziah and her brothers and sisters, found a warm and welcome home; and when the storm howled without, and lashed the poor naked trees, the Cricket on the warm hearth would chirp out cheery welcome ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... was very fond of this sprightly cousin of his, who was so amusing, so kindly, and so sisterly in her ways. She had more ease of manner, as well as brightness of temperament, than her sisters, and her company had been a source of great pleasure to him. The girl saw the look of sympathetic curiosity ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... idea of the extent of research and imagination bestowed on this subject may be gleaned from the sprightly work of Pierquin de Gemblouz, "Idiomologie des Animaux," published at ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to determine which of their moods is dominant, that we may know how to treat them. If the severe mood be on, we would just as soon think of whistling at a funeral as indulging in a jest; but if the cloud be off, we have a sprightly friend and a pleasant time with him. Goldsmith's pedagogue was a man of moods, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... of Mid. Eng. orped, bold, warlike. Craske is an East Anglian word for fat, and Crouse is used in the north for sprightly, confident. To these we may add Ketch, Kedge, Gedge, from an ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... of separating love from marriage, and establishing it beautifully in another relation, is my aversion, and it will have to stand. Henry was patient with me, but we were both genuinely glad when a day or two later we came back to the sprightly little American love affair that we had chaperoned on the Espagne crossing the ocean. That love affair we could understand. It had been following us with a feline tenacity all over France. When we left the Eager Soul with the Gilded Youth in the hospital at—we'll say Landrecourt, ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... Russell got out. Then Harry assisted Mrs. Russell to descend. After this he assisted Katie out of the cab, and Ashby saw that she looked as fresh, as bright, and as blooming as a rose, that she showed not a trace of care or anxiety, and that she was as sprightly and coquettish ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... in the once cheerful old Hall! Mr. Aubrey sitting in the library, intently engaged upon books and papers—Mrs. Aubrey and Kate now and then, arm in arm, walking slowly up and down the galleries, or one of the rooms, or the hall, not with their former sprightly gayety, but pensive, and often in tears, and then returning to the chamber of their suffering parent. All this was sad work, indeed, and seemed, as it were, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... enterprise below! 'T is sweet to know that stocks will stand When we with daisies lie, That commerce will continue, And trades as briskly fly. It makes the parting tranquil And keeps the soul serene, That gentlemen so sprightly Conduct the ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... this conversation was, it roused in Mr. Winkle the highest degree of excitement and anxiety. The suspected prior attachment rankled in his heart. Could he be the object of it? Could it be for him that the fair Arabella had looked scornfully on the sprightly Bob Sawyer, or had he a successful rival? He determined to see her, cost what it might; but here an insurmountable objection presented itself, for whether the explanatory 'over that way,' and 'down there,' of Mr. Ben Allen, meant three miles off, or ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... noblest sorts of Wine, pretty store of pure and curiously figured Crystals of Salt, together with a great proportion of a Liquor as sweet almost as Hony; and these I obtained not from Must, but True and sprightly Wine; besides the Vinous Liquor, the fermented Juice of Grapes is partly turned into liquid Dregs or Leeze, and partly into that crust or dry feculancy that is commonly called Tartar; and this Tartar may by the Fire be easily divided into five differing substances; four of which are not Acid, ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... a laugh, "I have conquered it, and I am now about to find some other empress of the heart. What think you of the Lady Hasselton?—a fair dame and a sprightly. I want nothing but her love to be the most enviable of men, and a French valet-de-chambre to be ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... reward—Ran away from the subscriber a Negro girl named Maria. She is of a copper color, between thirteen and fourteen years of age—bareheaded and barefooted. She is small for her age—very sprightly and very likely. She stated she was going to see ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... girls brought into the town for a day and a night's shopping and gadding, as they would call it, under the escort of an indulgent uncle: a bachelor probably, else madam, his wife, would have been there to keep them in order; and not so very elderly, for the good man was of what is styled a sprightly turn, and though his nieces submitted to his authority, there was a decidedly modified amount of reverence in the way in ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... doleful decay and downfall, and the years the unhappy woman had struggled on. At this he started to go; but there was something in her manner that detained him. Her tone had been light and chatty before; and, though she spoke with proper gravity, it was sprightly rather than earnest. I did not notice any striking change; and yet it seemed suddenly to assume the gentle impressiveness one sometimes fancies we should ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... bows low. It is Haydn, and there is sprightly malice in his music. The glorious periwigged giant of Halle conducts a chorus of millions; Handel's hailstones rattle upon the pate of the Sphinx. "A man!" cries Stannum, as the heavens storm out their cadenced hallelujahs. The divine youth approaches. His mien is excellent and ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... and spirited adventures any bright boy could want than is to be found in this series of historical biography, it is difficult to imagine. This volume is written in a most sprightly manner; and the life of its hero, Fernan Magellan, with its rapid stride from the softness of a petted youth to the sturdy courage and persevering fortitude of manhood, makes a tale of ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... put in an hour of solid work for a month, Bob I ought to be ashamed, and I am." He paused. "But there's no use jumping all over myself if I haven't," he resumed, shifting to a more sprightly tone. "I've said I was going to take a spurt soon and I mean it. I'll begin ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett

... sprightly, sleek, and even natty; their dispositions are genial and vivacious, not quarrelsome, like their sparrow cousins, and what is perhaps best about them, they are birds we may surely depend upon seeing in the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... A people so lively, sprightly, and good-humoured as the Otaheitans are, must necessarily have their amusements. They are fond of music, such as is derived from a rude flute and a drum; of dancing, wrestling, shooting with the bow, and throwing the lance. They exhibit frequent ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... The sprightly CANADA VIOLET (V. Canadensis), widely distributed in woodlands, chiefly in hilly and mountainous regions, rears tall, leafy stems terminated by faintly fragrant white or pale lavender blossoms, purple-tinged ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... the amusement, of the assembled guests. For music and dancing were considered as essential at their entertainments, as among the Greeks; but it is by no means certain that these diversions counteracted the effect of wine, as Plutarch imagines; a sprightly air is more likely to have invited another glass; and sobriety at a feast was not one of the objects of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... sheet; having secured this treasure, she ran with it upon deck in the most extravagant joy, viewed it over and over with delight, and there formed it into a really very becoming drapery. She appeared quite conscious of her increased attractions in this attire, leaped about in the most sprightly manner, and called on all the persons of the Court to admire her. In short, a young European lady on first decorating herself with the most costly Persian shawl, would not have been half so happy as this young Princess dressed in ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... was singled out for persecution. Wilkes had, till very lately, been known chiefly as one of the most profane, licentious, and agreeable rakes about town. He was a man of taste, reading, and engaging manners. His sprightly conversation was the delight of greenrooms and taverns, and pleased even grave hearers when he was sufficiently under restraint to abstain from detailing the particulars of his amours, and from breaking jests ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... she heard a ringing laugh, followed by loud, sprightly talking. It was not her lover's voice, and endeavoring, while she waited for Andreas, to catch what was being said on the other side of the door, she distinctly heard the body-physician (for no other pronounced the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... recital of Scarlatti, Couperin, Rameau on a clavecin! Still, as Mozart and Bach are endurable now, there is no warrant for any supposition that Chopin would not be tolerated a half century hence. Fancy those sprightly, spiritual, and very national dances, the mazurkas, not making an impression! Or at least two of the ballades! Or three of the nocturnes! Not to mention the polonaises, preludes, scherzos, and etudes. Simply from curiosity the other night—I get so tired playing ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... delivered as Wegotisms. Don't be stiff about the matter. I tell you there is no other way; and indeed I think it no harm, but an advantage, to diversify the form, and leave out the solemn and juridical Wego sometimes, for the more sprightly and ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... who had sunk, as they always did, into a state of torpid awe under the Doctor's eloquence, now recovered spirits enough to rally Paul with much sprightly humour. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... during which Mrs. Delarayne had discovered new haunts and new households in which she could behave, even if she were not accepted, as a person who was not of "mediaeval antiquity," her taste for this kind of life had developed. Enamoured as this sprightly quinquagenarian had always been of the other sex, and resolute as she was to show that an old war-horse could prance as bravely as a colt to the stirring trumpet call of youth, she had entered heart and soul ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... to teas and church, as sufficient intercourse with this world and preparation for the next, now had clubs and classes where they pounced on subjects not even mentionable fifty years ago, and shook them to shreds in their well-kept teeth. There was sprightly talk about class-consciousness, and young women who, if their incomes had been dissipated by inadequate trusteeship, would once have taught school according to a gentle ideal, now went away and learned to be social workers, and came back to make self-possessed ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... History of Musick, iv. 391. says that it occurs in the opera of Dioclesian, set to music by Purcell, and explains it to be "a very sprightly movement of two reprises, or strains, with eight bars in each: the time three quarters in a bar, the first pointed." I take this opportunity of mentioning, that among Dr. Rawlinson's MSS. in the Bodleian, [Poet. 108.] is a volume which ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... the poem is by no means wholly lacking in interest. If not his best work, "The Bride" is by no means his worst. Like most of his poems, it is written in an heroic stanza of six lines, and, as is not so common with him, is in dialogue form. The dialogue for the most part is well sustained and sprightly. The story of the birth of Merlin, it is true, seems to have been inserted mainly to fill out the required number of pages; but this digression has an interest of its own, in that the name here given to Merlin's mother, "Lady Adhan," does not appear in the ordinary ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al

... good company and makes him entirely unfit for the conversation of the polite world." "I don't know how the mathematics may assist the judgment, but they have a great tendency to make men dull. I who am far from being sprightly even in my gaiety, am the very reverse of it at this time." Certainly to produce sprightliness is neither the aim nor the general effect of mathematics. That while military education was carried on, general culture was not wholly neglected, is proved by the famous exclamation ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... patience with the way in which justice errs," cried Mrs. Wilson, in the same spirited, sprightly way her daughter might have done. "We all know that Big Bill is not accountable. He has always been the tool of anyone who would make use of him. I doubt if he made any money by this work. There was a shrewder man back of him who planned this ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... pity then Should sloth's unkindly fogs depress to earth Her tender blossom; choke the streams of life, And blast her spring! Far otherwise design'd Almighty Wisdom; Nature's happy cares 230 The obedient heart far otherwise incline. Witness the sprightly joy when aught unknown Strikes the quick sense, and wakes each active power To brisker measures: witness the neglect Of all familiar prospects, [Endnote D] though beheld With transport once; the fond attentive gaze Of young ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... Sprightly, but not confident, cousin Charlotte!—Be sure forget not to look down, or aside, when looked at. When eyes meet eyes, be your's the retreating ones. Your face ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... to the last line, her soft low voice seemed to awaken a chorus of sprightly horns and trumpets, and certain other wind instruments peculiar to the music of that day. The hillock bordered the high road to London—which then wound through wastes of forest land—and now emerging from the trees ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... must take the love-sickness, so Messer Brunetto argued, and must needs express the perfidious folly in words, what better vehicle could he have for his salacious fancy than the forms and modes and moods which contented the amorous Ovidius, and the sprightly Tibullus, and the hot-headed, hot-hearted Catullus, and the tuneful Petronius, and so on, to much the same purpose, through a string of ancient amorists? But we that were younger than Messer Brunetto, and simpler, and certainly more ignorant, we found a great pleasure in these verses that ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... contentedly out of his small, bright eyes, Jane Vail was what he and his mother termed the life of the party, but although she played an unfaltering part in the comedy of, "Well, partner! Didn't you get my signal? Now who's asleep?" and the sprightly games which followed, and exclaimed prettily over the decked supper table, deep under the high-piled masses of her dark hair, dark thoughts were stirring. She seemed to herself to be marching inexorably to the ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... he was ashamed of her physical imperfections, he admired her cleverness. Often he said to Popova: "I tell you, she might make some man a sprightly and entertaining companion, even if she ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... of it, this furtive and sprightly old man. And because he knew it he attempted to hide his guilt under a ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... sufficiently unscrupulous and hungry of gain to render such a stratagem on his part any thing but improbable. Whether Charles de Bernard be an assumed name or not, it has long since been evident, that the books published under it proceed from a more guarded and uniformly sprightly pen, than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... them to throw the ink over their victim's papers, break his pencils, mix his colours, mislay his nightcap, and go whiz against his face in the shape of a great bat, till the astonished Frenchman began to think the pensive goblins of the place had taken a sprightly fit,—we hasten to a small green spot some little way from the town, in the valley of the Neckar, and by the banks of its silver stream. It was circled round by dark trees, save on that side bordered by the river. The wild-flowers ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... head too large for the body, and having a thick neck and extended veins, was generally strong and of a martial spirit. When the head was long and of conical shape, the person was generally impudent and rash; and, if sprightly in early life, was supposed to lose spirit and vivacity before reaching the age of thirty years. A well-proportioned head, but slightly compressed at the sides, denoted a person of good apprehension, proceeding from the spirits domiciled there. A spherical head denoted inconstancy, forgetfulness, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... Governor at breakfast, and he insisted on our seating ourselves, and making a second breakfast with him in company with his wife—a sprightly, bright mulatto—and a pretty girl, quite white, of about sixteen, and the padre. After breakfast we were introduced to a number of what appeared to be the gentry of the island, and who had assembled thus early to meet us. Having smoked and chatted awhile, we remounted ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... Francie's lovers now appeared, one after the other; she had made each promise to come early. They were all clean-shaven and sprightly, with that peculiar kind of young-man sprightliness which had recently invaded Kensington; they did not seem to mind each other's presence in the least, and wore their ties bunching out at the ends, white waistcoats, and socks with clocks. All had handkerchiefs concealed in their cuffs. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of the shopkeeper were realized, and his rooms soon became notorious through the charms of the sprightly grisette. She had been in his employ about a year, when her admirers were thrown info confusion by her sudden disappearance from the shop. Monsieur Le Blanc was unable to account for her absence, and Madame Rogt was ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... long met, once a week or so, at the Liberal Club, where it was their habit to play together a game of draughts. Occasionally they conversed; but it was a rather one-sided dialogue, for whereas the tailor had a sprightly intelligence and—so far as his breath allowed—a ready flow of words, the timber-merchant found himself at a disadvantage when mental activity was called for. The best-natured man in the world, Mr. Lott would sit smiling and content so long ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... sprightly, adventurous nerve in the mind, and would pull his velvet sleeves busily up—such was his little way. He began ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... of Clarkson was first turned to the subject by having it given out as the theme for a prize composition in his college class, he being at that time a sprightly young man, about twenty-four years of age. He entered into the investigation with no other purpose than to see what he could make of it as a ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... was the world still but for this. From the bunk house came the mellow throbbing of a stringed instrument, the guitar of Sandy Sawtelle, star rider of the Arrowhead, temporarily withdrawn from a career of sprightly endeavour by a sprained ankle and solacing his retirement with music. He was playing "The Rosary"—very badly indeed, but one knew only too well what he meant. The two performers were distant enough to be no affront to each other. The hammock, less ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... judges of the federal courts owned estates in the lower South which yielded incomes ofttimes greater than their official salaries. The very flower and beauty of the land were Southern gentlemen like Robert E. Lee and Wade Hampton, or ladies like the sprightly Mrs. Chestnut or the ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... deck. One of the sailors was in the act of throwing overboard a life buoy. "It is the Pole!" was our first exclamation. "No, no," said Hildebrand, with a distressed face, "it is the cabin-boy"—a sprightly, handsome fellow of fourteen. There he was struggling in the icy water, looking toward the steamer, which was every moment more distant. Two men were in the little boat, which had just been run down ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... was a fresh complexioned, sprightly young fellow of six or seven and twenty, with dark, frank-looking eyes, a prominent nose, and thin mobile lips. He had dark-brown hair, closely cropped; and, as became one of his profession, he was guiltless of either beard or moustache. Like Mirpah, he inherited ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various

... brown hair rippling away from it, a thoughtful mouth that matched well with the eyes; an energetic maiden, despite the air of study that somehow surrounded her; you were sure her voice would be sweet, and as sure that it would be sprightly, and you were equally sure that a wealth of strength was hidden behind the sweetness. She was only eighteen, eighteen to-day, but during the last two years she had rapidly developed into womanhood. The master told Miss Prudence this morning that she was trustworthy ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... sleeper, Mr. Rollins," said a familiar voice, but it was gay and sprightly. He looked up blankly, and it was a full half-minute before he could get ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon

... to lock up the soul which can exist and travel without the body; for upon the wings of fancy my spirit soared free from out the straitened corpse, and the first thing I perceived close by was a dancing-knoll and such a fantastic rout {4a} in blue petticoats and red caps, briskly footing a sprightly dance. I stood awhile hesitating whether I should approach them or not, for in my confusion I feared they were a pack of hungry gipsies and that the least they would do, would be to kill me for their supper, and ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... obtained from Hadwin a description of the person and carriage of his nephew. Every circumstance evinced the identity of their persons. Wallace, then, was the engaging and sprightly youth whom I had encountered at Lesher's; and who, for purposes not hitherto discoverable, had led me into a situation ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... Ramee, in sprightly allusion to the silence of his subordinate, "if he has said anything ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... then they come home t'other way, round the Horn, an' she done so well, an' was such a sight o' company, the other child'n was jealous, an' she promised she'd go a v'y'ge long o' each on 'em. She was as sprightly a person as ever I see; an' could speak well ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... without the inducements of dancing, music, refreshments, or display of any kind; when I saw also how thoroughly they enjoyed themselves, how some were introduced, and those who were not entered into sprightly conversation without fear of lessening an imaginary dignity, I more than ever regretted the icy coldness in which we wrap ourselves. And yet, though we take such trouble to clothe ourselves in this glacial dignity, nothing pleases us better than to go to ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... for calling him to her. She said pretty things—for she was Miss Chudleigh. He said pretty things—for he was Mr. Cibber; and all the company, men and women, seemed to think they had an interest in what was said, and were half as well pleased as if they had said the sprightly things themselves; and mighty well contented were they to be secondhand repeaters of the pretty things. But once I faced the laureate squatted upon one of the benches, with a face more wrinkled than ordinary with disappointment 'I thought,' said I, 'you ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various

... heralds, ministers of Jove, Loud notice issue that the boys well-grown, And ancients silver-hair'd on the high towers 600 Built by the Gods, keep watch; on every hearth In Troy, let those of the inferior sex Make sprightly blaze, and place ye there a guard Sufficient, lest in absence of the troops An ambush enter, and surprise the town. 605 Act thus, ye dauntless Trojans; the advice Is wholesome, and shall serve the present need, And so much for the night; ye shall be told The business of the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... death of his father and grandfather, inherited what was then considered as a fortune, and was graduated at Princeton in 1772, with no enviable reputation, being noted for his idleness and habits bordering on dissipation. He was a handsome and sprightly young man of sixteen, a favorite with women of all ages. He made choice of the profession of law, and commenced the study under Tappan Reeve of Elizabethtown. After the battle of Bunker Hill he entered the army at Boston, but, tired of inactivity, joined Arnold's expedition to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... unbroken and the relationship clearer than many of the family trees of the royal houses. The French workman's name was Oliver Bassel, or Olivier Basselin, and in his way he was a poet. He composed and sang certain sprightly songs which struck the popular fancy and achieved a reputation not only in his own town but throughout ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... two chief enthusiasts of the party, walked on either side of the teacher, discussing matters botanical; and the others straggled in little groups behind. Honor found herself walking with Lettice Talbot, who was in a more than usually sprightly frame of mind, bantering and teasing, and turning everything ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... not great extent of comprehension or fertility of mind. Of the little that appears, still less is his own. His praise must be derived from the easy sweetness of his diction: in his verses there is more happiness than pains; he is sprightly without effort, and always delights, though he never ravishes; everything is proper, yet everything seems casual. If there is some appearance of elaboration in "The Hermit," the narrative, as it is less airy, is less pleasing. Of his other compositions it is impossible ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... said he to himself: "here they repose together, and take their refreshments in common, savoured by sprightly conversation and jokes. Alas! I, poor Jalaladdeen, must sit at home alone, and take my ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... retired; and from that time, though Miss Milner's behaviour continued the same, yet her looks and her voice were totally altered—for the world, she could not have looked cheerfully; for the world, she could not have spoken with a sprightly accent; she frequently began in one, but not three words could she utter, before her tones sunk into dejection. Not only her colour, but her features became changed; her eyes lost their brilliancy, her lips seemed to hang without the power of motion, her head drooped, and her dress was ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... them were women of intelligence. But if a man should enter, a single one, and not even a man of distinction, the same conversation would suddenly become more spirituelle and more agreeable. The conversation of men is doubtless less sprightly when there are no women present; but ordinarily, although it may be more serious, it is still rational, and they can do without us more easily than we ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... will permit me to make use of the phraseology employed by M. Sainte-Beuve for his biographies of obscurities—all this, I repeat, is the playful and sprightly yet already somewhat decadent side of a strong race. It smacks rather of the Parc-aux-Cerfs than of the Hotel de Rambouillet. It is a race of the strong rather than of the sweet; I incline to lay a little debauchery to its charge, and more than I should ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac

... was as sprightly, as full of fun and humor as such breakfasts usually are. The priest, Phaddhy, and the young collegian, had a topic of their own, whilst the rest were engaged in a kind of by play, until the meal ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... green. Georgie knew well that this was no mere stroll; she was on her way to pay a call of the most formal and magnificent kind. She did not deviate a hair-breadth from her straight course to the door of the Arms, she just waggled her hand to Mrs Antrobus, blew a kiss to her sprightly daughters, made a gracious bow to Colonel Boucher, who stood up and took his hat off, and went on with the inexorability of the march of destiny, or of fate knocking at the door in the immortal fifth symphony. And in her hand she carried a note. Through his glasses Georgie ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... he had so ardently longed for, now grazed soulfully in a temporary enclosure out on the mesa. Two young and sprightly black pigs prospected the confines of their littered hermitage. Four gaunt hens and a more or less dilapidated rooster stalked about the yard, no longer afraid of the watchful Chance, who had previously introduced himself to the rooster without ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... put a day's work behind them; and they may be more lightsome when they start in the morning, at five o'clock or soon after it. Be that as it may, in the evenings I find them taciturn, nonchalant rather than cheerful, not much disposed to be sprightly. Long-striding and ungainly, they walk home; between six o'clock and seven you may be sure of seeing some of them coming up the hill from the town, alone or by twos and threes. They speak but little; they look tired and stern; very often there is nothing but a twinkle in their eyes ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... failing him, dying away within him; for under this persecution his health and spirits were worn out. His face, they noticed, was far paler than when he came, his looks almost haggard, and his manner less sprightly than before. He had honourably abstained hitherto from giving Walter any direct account of his troubles, but now he yearned for some advice and comfort, and went to Walter's study, not to complain, but to ask if Walter thought there was any ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... existence, from that love of antique pomp and establishment which has embellished our Court with so many gold-sticks and white rods, and such trains of beef-eaters and grooms of the stole—though it has submitted to the suppression of the more sprightly appendages of a king's fool, or a court jester. That the household poet should have survived the other wits of the establishment, can only be explained by the circumstance of his office being more easily converted into ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... scientific spirit. "The French, in point of national character, hold nearly the same relative place amongst the nations of Europe that the Athenians held amongst the States of Ancient Greece." And whilst it is admitted the French are quick, sprightly, vivacious, perhaps sometimes light even to frivolity, it must be conceded they have cultivated the natural and exact sciences with a patience, and perseverance, and success unsurpassed by any of the nations of Europe. And so the Athenians were the Frenchmen ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... were landed in a waiting-room at Pittsburg. I had now under my charge a young and sprightly Dutch widow with her children; these I was to watch over providentially for a certain distance farther on the way; but as I found she was furnished with a basket of eatables, I left her in the waiting-room to seek ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... laborious Cheating, all my Youth and Vigour, in hopes of drunken Pleasures when I'm old; or else go with him into Wales, and there lead a thoughtless Life, hunt, and drink, and make love to none but Chamber-maids. No, my Olivia, I'll use the sprightly Runnings of my Life, and not hope distant ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... Indians were rather ugly and ill made, their legs and arms being peculiarly slender, their cheek-bones high, and their eyes projecting. The females, with the same character of form, were somewhat more handsome. Both sexes appeared cheerful and sprightly, but afforded many indications of being both cunning and vicious. The men shave the hair off their heads, except a small tuft on the top, which they suffer to grow, so as to wear it in plats over the shoulders. In full dress, the principal chiefs wear a hawk's ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... would do so. Every Monday morning, in the classroom, Tinkleby passed round an old missionary box, crying, "Now then! pay up, you beggars. No broken glass or brace buttons!" It was always a race to get the collection over by the time Mr. Ward entered the room; but the sprightly Tinkleby, who seemed to have undertaken the combined duties of president, secretary, and treasurer, hurried through it somehow; and each week the box grew heavier, and the hearts of the contributors lighter as they ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... been so gaily insolent to every other European nation in his flimsy pamphlet, that some will probably praise, many reply to, all read, and all forget it. I will confess myself so seized on by his sprightly impertinence, that I wished for leisure to translate, and wit to answer him at first, but the want of one solid thought by which to recollect his existence has cured me; and I now find that he was deliciously cool and sharp, like ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... jolly?" I queried. "The weather or your sprightly self? Do you know, you'd make a splendid poster now for some new-fangled cork-soled walking shoe? Or perhaps a bearskin ulster for Klondike wear. I'm sure a feather boa concern would pay a fortune for your picture. I would I were an artist man, with a little brush ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... and nobly born; she had been carefully brought up; she had all the qualifications which the world positively demands of a woman placed in the high position which I desired to reach; she had been well educated, she expressed herself with a sprightly facility at once rare and common in France; where the most prettily worded phrases of many women are emptiness itself, while her bright talk was full of sense. Above all, she had a deep consciousness ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... break? Is God powerful or powerless? If powerful, why did He not let us sleep in peace, without setting us here to taste of every pain and mortification, to become acquainted with every grief, and then to perish miserably?" Old questions these, which the sprightly critic justly condemns as morbid and futile, and not to be dangled before a merry world of make-believe. Perhaps he is right. It is better to play at marbles on a sepulchre than to lift the lid and peep inside. But, for all that, they will arise when we sit alone at even in our individual wildernesses, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... the milk, while taking unlawful sips. But a plea can be found even for the most despised of creatures. Cheese is a dainty to the pilfering mouse, but the eggs of the cockroach are a still daintier morsel. The cricket is a scavenger, and besides cheering us by his sprightly song, rids the floor of tiny atoms of insanitary dust, and the house-spider preys on the clothes-moth. One lesson at least is taught by many a household insect, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... possessor of two pretty daughters, whom he kept in a tower under lock and key, so dangerous a town is Coimbra! But we set our wits to work to catch a sight of the beautiful recluses. By means of a nosegay tied to the end of a long stick we drew two sprightly faces, well worthy their reputation, to the window, and so we made acquaintance. Then we were fetched to go over the university, the honours of which were done us by the "grand master" in a blue and gold gown, assisted by two professors who spoke French admirably well. Aumale, being ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... summer seat; My shrubs, displaced from that retreat, Enjoy'd the open air; Two goldfinches whose sprightly song Had been their mutual solace long, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... now only two young mice left, Velvet and Sprightly. Velvet was so shocked at the bad end which her two brothers had come to, that she resolved not to be naughty again, but try by her good conduct, to make amends for her thoughtless behaviour—but when she told Sprightly of her ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill

... To us, accustomed as we were to infer the existence of slavery from the presence of a particular hue, the numbers of negroes passing to and fro, engaged in their several employments, denoted a land of oppression; but the erect forms, the active movements, and the sprightly countenances, bespoke that spirit of disinthrallment which had gone ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... apothecary's daughter. She added that one day Madame de Brinvilliers, after a dinner party, in a merry mood, said, showing her a little box, "Here is vengeance on one's enemies: this box is small, but holds plenty of successions!" That she gave back the box into her hands, but soon changing from her sprightly mood, she cried, "Good heavens, what have I said? Tell nobody." That Lambert, clerk at the palace, told her he had brought the packets to Madame from Sainte-Croix; that Lachaussee often went to see her; and that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE



Words linked to "Sprightly" :   spirited



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