"Verve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... landscapes, and little figures here and there; and all this, although it may appear good to some eyes, is in truth done without reasonableness or art, without symmetry or proportion, without care in selecting or rejecting, and finally without any substance or verve, and in spite of all this, painting in some other parts is worse than it is in Flanders. Neither do I speak so badly of Flemish painting because it is all bad, but because it tries to do so many things at once (each of which alone would suffice ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... not a little curious that wearing the mask, a revival of the antique, was practised in some of these ballets. The history of the opera-ballet of those days gives to us many celebrated names of musicians, such as Destouches, who gave new "verve" to ballet music, and Rameau. Jean Georges Noverre abolished the singing and established the five-act ballet on its own footing in 1776. In this it appears he had partly the advice of Garrick, whom he met in London. ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... be resistible, vulnerable, breakable. The old verve and elan came back with all the old fire, and along with these, new depths of grim courage and tenacity, and, we are told, of spirituality, which may be the making of a new France greater than the world ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... with much verve and vigor. It was a pleasant morning: the windows were open; the schoolrooms were all well ventilated; the teachers, the best of their kind, were stimulating in their lectures and in their conversation. There was a look of business and animation throughout the whole ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... year you can count on unvarying sunny weather, the women dress on the streets with nothing short of gorgeousness. All the colors that the rainbow knows and a few that it has never seen, appear here. And worn with such chic, such verve! Not even in Paris, where may appear a more conventional smartness, is sartorial picturesqueness carried off with such an air of authority. Polaire, who was advertised as the ugliest woman in the world, should have made a fortune in California. For the Californian ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... not speak French very fluently; but as soon as she began to speak Italian, the Italian of Naples, she thrilled like a fish that falls back into the water, and gesticulated with Neapolitan verve. "Put your hands in your pockets," the Duke d'Aumale would say to her. "I shall have to have your hands tied. Why do ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... that more music would be agreeable, but there was no response. He was quite alone with Constantia, and they talked of Poland's tone-poet. She knew much more of Chopin than he did, and she recited Mickiewicz's patriotic poems with incomparable verve. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... it is not correctness of grammar nor elegance of enunciation that charms us; it is spirit, VERVE, the sudden turn of humour, the keen, pungent taste of life. For this reason a touch of dialect, a flavour of brogue, is delightful. Any dialect is classic that has conveyed beautiful thoughts. Who that ever talked with the poet Tennyson, when ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... been approached, nor has the opera, so far as my information goes, ever been given with the same Gilbertian verve and swing. The subsequent performance of "The Mikado" by the authorized company, seen throughout the United States, seemed by comparison "like water ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... a hand to conceal his smile over the police official's chagrin. Gilder, staring always at this woman who had come to be his Nemesis, was marveling over the beauty and verve of the one so hating him as to plan the ruin of his life ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... firmly amid the turmoil of Jabez's environment—and that was his idealistic and almost fanatical admiration of the exploits of Buffalo Bill as depicted on the screen and retailed in small paper-bound books. Indeed so struck was he by the verve and virility of this astounding man that he took to attiring his lower limbs—which seldom showed above the counter—in the breeches, leggings, belt and pistol so well known to all lovers of the limitless prairie. The infinite pathos of Jabez Puffwater's ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... said to me to-day: "You interest me. Most men are very commonplace, without verve or poetry. In you there is a certain depth and capacity for enthusiasm and a deep seriousness, which delight me. I ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... her youth in a shy heightening of color. Under the protection of the cheerful, slowly moving crowd she felt at liberty to drop for a minute the subdued air of his daughter's paid companion, and in her replies to what he said she spoke with some of her old gayety of verve. It was an unfortunate moment in which to yield to this temptation, for it was, perhaps, the only occasion since her coming to New York on ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... the refreshments. It was, in fact, a reception. Gaul's most lively sons bowed before Albion's fairest daughters, and displayed that fund of verve and esprit which they rightly pride themselves upon possessing, and which, of course, leave mere Englishmen so far behind in the paths ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... bliss, comes the hour of distress, Old age, with that face of aversion to joy. Oh! heavy of head, and silent as lead, And unbreathed as the dead, is the person of Age; Not a joint, not a nerve—so prostrate their verve— In the contest shall serve, or the feat to engage. To leap with the best, or the billow to breast, Or the race prize to wrest, were but effort in vain; On the message of death pours an Egypt of wrath,[127] The fever's hot breath, the dart-shot of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... pas cruel: au contraire! je sais meme qu'il avait demande une amnistie generale; mais l'idee de decouvrir un chef de conspirateurs va le mettre en verve![43] il deploiera contre vous les ressources de son esprit ... votre signalement sera partout ... je le sais ... le premier ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... from the pale-faced Meeus—this was a man they felt who would lead them to more unspeakable butchery than Meeus had ever done. Therefore they shouted, piled their arms in the office and returned to the rebuilding of their huts with verve. ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... fille joyeuse et folle, Que ta verve railleuse animait Corilla, Et que tu nous lanais avec la Rosina La roulade amoureuse et l'oeillade espagnole ? Ces pleurs sur tes bras nus, quand tu chantais le Saule, ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... songs: "There be none of Beauty's daughters," "She walks in beauty," "Maid of Athens," "I enter thy garden of roses," the translation "Sons of the Greeks," and others, have a flow and verve that it is pedantry to ignore; but in general Byron was too much of the earth earthy to be a great lyrist. Some of the greatest have lived wild lives, but their wings were not weighted with the lead of the love ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... explain with railing verve what Don Vincente Ribiera stood for—a mournful little man oppressed by his own good intentions, the significance of battles won, who Montero was (un grotesque vaniteux et feroce), and the manner of the new loan connected with railway development, and the colonization of vast ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the stars with the saddle beneath his head, and his rifle in his hand, all through the night; who had served, and served well, in fierce, arduous, unremitting work, in trying campaigns and in close discipline; who had blent the verve, the brilliance, the daring, the eat-drink-and-enjoy-for-to-morrow-we-die of the French Chasseur, with something that was very different, and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... scoundrel of all is approved in the end and rewarded. The comedy is so admirably written and contrived, the personages stand out with such lifelike distinctness in their several kinds, and the whole is animated with such verve and resourcefulness that "The Alchemist" is a new marvel every time it is read. Lastly of this group comes the tremendous comedy, "Bartholomew Fair," less clear cut, less definite, and less structurally worthy of praise than its three predecessors, but full ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... part of the ladies raised this handsome golden-haired Adonis to a higher pinnacle of favour than ever. It seemed to Tom that so long as a crime was carried out with dash, and verve, and success, it only brought a man fame and honour. He shivered sometimes when he thought of his mother and sister, and what they would think if they suspected that he had been led into an open act of law breaking and robbery. But he felt a little flattered in the society of these ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... enduring interest on the part of the reader. From an artistic and literary point of view, indeed, the book is entirely noteworthy. It has swing, verve, and genuine force. The interest is cumulative, and the denouement of the story ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... influence whatever. The bands played "God save the Queen," "Rule Britannia," "The Boyne Water," and "The Death of Nelson." The fifes screamed shrilly, the brass tubes blared, and every drummer drummed as if he had the Pope himself under his especial care. The vigour and verve of these marching musicians is very surprising. You cannot tire them out. The tenth mile ended as fresh as the first, though every performer had worked like a horse. There is a reason for this. Their hearts are in the work. To them it means something. The scarves and busbies and uniforms ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... occasions, also to be described by those who feared the razor-edge as petulant instead of peevish, and cendree instead of sandy, passed the tedious moments of waiting in a running commentary upon the idiosyncrasies and oddities of the people and refreshments of the past hours, with a verve which she fondly believed to be a combination of sarcasm and cynicism, but which, in reality, was the kernel of the nut of spitefulness, hanging from the withering bough of the tree ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... collection of "Poems and Songs" (Digte og Sange), which, it is no exaggeration to say, marks a new era in the Norwegian lyric. Among Bjoernson's predecessors there are but two lyrists of the first order, viz., Wergeland and Welhaven. The former was magnificently profuse and chaotic, abounding in verve and daring imagery, but withal high-sounding, declamatory, and, at his worst, bombastic. There is a reminiscence in him of Klopstock's inflated rhetoric; and a certain dithyrambic ecstasy—a strained, high-keyed aria-style which sometimes breaks into falsetto. His great rival, Welhaven, was soberer, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... stone. He drew what he deserved—a sullen, scared old tomcat with none of the verve of Captain Wow. Woodley's Partner was the most animal of all the cats on the ship, a low, brutish type with a dull mind. Even telepathy had not refined his character. His ears were half chewed off from the first fights ...
— The Game of Rat and Dragon • Cordwainer Smith
... book of Spanish dances and two Spanish albums full of music of most varying mood, yet every mood characteristic of Spain and its people, now gay, now languorous, now dashing, now subdued, now softly whispering, now full of verve and passion, like the "Bolero," the fifth of the "Spanish Dances," Op. 12, with its sharply accentuated rhythm and dashing melody, which toward the ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... almost without a pause of transition she began that provocative measure—the dance of desire. Thrilling with the joy of expressing her love, her beautiful new love for Seagreave, through her art, she danced with a verve, an abandon, a more spontaneous impulse than she had ever shown before. The Tango! She made it a thing of alluring advances, of stinging repulses, of sudden, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... associated with The Tale of Two Cities, since it was here that Mr. Lorry made the startling revelation to Miss Manette that her father had been "Recalled to Life". The vignette of eighteenth-century Dover is executed with true Dickensian verve: ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... conversation; il fuyait les discussions et les vains combats de paroles, mais c'etait pour mieux jouir du charme d'une causerie intime. Il possedait et parlait avec une egale perfection quatre langues: le francais, l'anglais, l'allemand, l'italien et passablement l'espagnol. Quand il causait, la verve du vieillard brodait sur le canevas un peu lourd de l'allemand ses brilliantes arabesques latines, grecques, francaises, anglaises, italiennes. C'etait un entrain, une precision et des sailles, une richesse de citations, une exactitude de details qui faisait couler les heures; et ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... he who was dreaming now, or was the event of the night a mere farce of his own imagining? Mr. Brotherson was whistling in his room, gaily and with ever increasing verve, and the tune which filled the whole floor with music was the same grand finale from William Tell which had seemed to work such magic in the night. As Sweetwater caught the mellow but indifferent notes sounding from those lips of ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... was a rollicking ballad he trolled out with verve and spirit; but still, though none of the guests now showed it openly, the anxious suspense did not abate, and by and by Miss Allonby smiled at the ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... affinity between the two men. My mother, who was greatly attached to Francis Balfour, said once to Sir M. Foster, "He has not got the dash and verve, but otherwise he reminds me curiously of what my husband was in his 'Rattlesnake' days." "How strange," replied Sir Michael, "when he first came to the front, Lankester wrote asking me, 'Who is this man Balfour you are always ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... introduced to her by Willie, Oscar's elder brother, whom I had met in Fleet Street. Willie was then a tall, well-made fellow of thirty or thereabouts with an expressive taking face, lit up with a pair of deep blue laughing eyes. He had any amount of physical vivacity, and told a good story with immense verve, without for a moment getting above the commonplace: to him the Corinthian journalism of The Daily Telegraph was literature. Still he had the surface good nature and good humour of healthy youth and was ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... arts, a kind of gesture, a method of dancing on paper." Sculpture, drawing, all the arts save music are imitative; so was the dance from which they sprang. But imitation is not all, or even first. "The dance may be mimetic; but the beauty and verve of the performance, not closeness of the imitation impresses; and tame additions of truth will encumber and not convince. The dance must control the pantomime." Art, that is, gradually dominates ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... tragedy made grand by grand reading, ardent by fiery action—some drama, whereof, for my part, I rarely studied the intrinsic merit; for M. Emanuel made it a vessel for an outpouring, and filled it with his native verve and passion like a cup with a vital brewage. Or else he would flash through our conventual darkness a reflex of a brighter world, show us a glimpse of the current literature of the day, read us passages from some enchanting ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... always in such sedate gowns, never low-cut, her manners were so suppressed, her hair done so differently, and what a difference hair made! In fact, it was in her private life that she felt herself more truly the actress. On the boards her real secret self seemed to flash forth, full of verve, dash, roguery, devilry. Should she take to a wig, or to character songs in appropriate costumes? No, she would run the risk. It gave more spice to life. Every evening now was an adventure, nay three adventures, and when she snuggled herself up at midnight in her demure ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... JACK, "And your colours are black!" But he heard—as he struggled to speak— The conductor observe, With remarkable verve, That he didn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... as supreme. Why should not we encourage individual young sculptors more? Give them portions of your work in which they can put all the fervor and enthusiasm of young manhood. Their powers may not be ripe, but they possess a verve and intensity that may have forever fled when in later years the imagination is less enthusiastic and the pulses slower. I am sure there are many young sculptors now wanting commissions who have been trained at the academy, and better still, in the best French schools. I maintain that the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... her heart and soul, without one single reservation. To see her face at such moments was to behold pure sunshine; to hear her voice was to listen to the very essence of laughter and happiness. She had a marvelous power of telling stories, and when she was happy she told them with such verve that all people within earshot hung on her words. Then she could improvise, and dance, and take off almost any character; in short, she was the life of every party who admitted ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... answered, with her old verve, "get out o' the house, man, and leave me to my work ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... piloted a landing craft with the same verve that she seemed to be able to handle any other responsibility. As he sat in the seat next to her, Ronny Bronston took in her practiced flicking of the controls from the side of his eyes. He wondered vaguely at the efficiency of such ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... tame, though its literary merit is considerable. He had a fair measure of constructive skill, but very little of poetic impulse or of dramatic verve. His best scenes interest us more for their good sense than for any more stirring qualities. His nearest approach to a strong character is the paterfamilias himself, who is certainly much less "woolly and mawkish"[52] than his pendant in Diderot. Next ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... heart she had always mistrusted the little stories, and now people who knew agreed with her. How could Rickie, or any one, make a living by pretending that Greek gods were alive, or that young ladies could vanish into trees? A sparkling society tale, full of verve and pathos, would have been another thing, and the editor might have ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... distribution and balance that the whole is as integral as a pearl. The scene on the Mount of Olives, which a great critic once pronounced worthy to compare with Correggio's work, is only to be surpassed by the Entombment. And in every scene—what freedom, action, verve! From the first to the last all passes with the swift step of Calamity, yet all with ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... they ceased to exist. Plautus conceived the plan of transporting to Rome Grecian comedies of the time of the new comedy and of adapting them more or less to Latin morals. He possessed a strong and brutal verve which did not lack power, and more than once Moliere did him the honour of taking inspiration from him. Terence, after him, the friend of Scipio the second Africanus, and perhaps in collaboration with him, in a way widely different ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... Unconscious imitator that she was, she stole Edith's former recklessness, and added to it something of her own dash and verve. Lethway, standing in the wings, knew she was not and never would be Edith. She was not fine enough. Edith at her best had frolicked. Mabel romped, was almost wanton. He cut out the string music at the final rehearsal. It did ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... after this I had nothing but letters from Sylvia. She proved to be an excellent letter-writer, full of verve and colour. I would not say that she poured out her soul to me, but she gave me glimpses of her states of mind, and the progress of ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... (I) is undoubtedly the best known of Aphra Behn's comedies. It long remained a popular favourite in the theatre, its verve, bustle and wit, utterly defiant of the modest Josephs and qualmy prudes who censured these lively scenes. Steele has mention of this in an archly humorous paper, No. 51, Spectator, Saturday, 28 April, 1711. He pictures a young lady who has taken offence at some negligent expression in that chastest ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... thunder, and many Voices yelled out, "Thief! Assassin! Murderer!" Another muttered in taunting undertones, "Let him be, fine fellow that he is! Suffer him to pass on, for he and he only shall get the cage and the Speaking-Bird." The Prince feared naught but advanced hot foot with his wonted verve and spirit; presently, however, when the Voices kept approaching nearer and nearer to him and increased in number on every side, he was sore perplexed. His legs began to tremble, he staggered and in fine overcome ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... be all right, Mr. Hadley. I have talked to my extra actors, and they promise to put more verve ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... shoulder, for no reason whatever, the sleek pale face of the manicure girl, who wore emeralds in her ears. And when she had clipped them on she was thrilled; they gave her a distinctive, a resolute charm. She could smile at herself again in that glass, at the colour and light and verve which had come back to her. The face pictured there had all the roundness, the softness and pinkiness of the face of the bride Marie, who had waked and looked therein on wonderful mornings, but it held more than the face of Marie the bride. It was strong; it had firmness and judgment ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... public and laid the foundation for a splendid reputation. She toured in England, Germany, Austria and America with great success. In the Grove Dictionary, her playing is described in the following manner: "It is marked by an amount of verve and animation that are most rare with the younger English pianists. She has a great command of tone gradation, admirable technical finish, genuine musical taste and considerable individuality of style." In 1903 Miss Goodson married ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... been crowning A Poet whose garland endures;— It was you that first told me of Browning,— That stupid old Browning of yours! His vogue and his verve are alarming, I'm anxious to give him his due; But, Fred, he's not nearly so charming A ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... from the beginning, as all those who have read the introductory chapters will readily admit. And the same lines were to be followed with an undeviating fixity of artistic purpose and with unfailing verve and spirit to the last. 'The Prodigious Adventures of Tartarin,' 'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Port-Tarascon,' form a trilogy; and I know of no other example in modern French literature of so long and so well sustained a joke. How is it then that we never grow tired of Tartarin? It is probably ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... some of the Dutch followed them, but with no great enthusiasm. Suddenly, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Holland had gained political independence, Dutch art struck off by itself, became original, became famous. It pictured native life with verve, skill, keenness of insight, and fine pictorial view. Limited it was; it never soared like Italian art, never became universal or world-embracing. It was distinct, individual, national, something that spoke for Holland, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... and bored spirits. It recrudesced the laughter and the song, and put a lilt into my own imagination so that I could laugh and sing and say foolish things with the liveliest of them, or platitudes with verve and intensity to the satisfaction of the pompous mediocre ones who knew ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... long lengths on them Before their ship began to swerve. The rabid screw was frothing at her stern; But I could feel the verve Of our blithe timbers tremble; every nerve Of our good race-horse ship For open ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... or that he was merely feeling for command of the instrument, for the plaintive melody that ran from shift to shift into a thin elfin wailing far up the sobbing strings broke off suddenly, and was followed by the crisp jar of crashing chords. Then "The Flowers of Edinburgh" rang out with Caledonian verve in it and a mad seductive swing, and the guests streamed out to the middle of the floor. That they had just eaten an excellent supper was a matter of no account ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... an Italian or an Englishman, because he may revel in unbounded license of metre and language, but in French poetry inspiration is by no means sufficient; severe study and constant practise are as indispensable as poetic verve to constitute a French poet. The French poets are sensible of this and on this account they prefer imitating the ancients, polishing their rough marble and fitting it to the national taste, to striking ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... question. He raved: "You let her go. Ha! what creatures you are—hein? But you find not anozer in fifty years, I say; and here you stop, and forty hours pass by, and not a sing in motion. What blood you have! It is water—not blood. Such a voice, a verve, a style, an eye, a devil, zat girl! and all drawn up and out before ze time by a man: she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had the defects of its qualities. Its spiritual ecstasy once conventionalized and reduced to a formula led to unreality, and, if not to untruth, at least to an unwholesome ignoring of a part of truth. There was, therefore, an inevitable reaction to the naturalism described with such verve and gusto by Fra Lippo Lippi. But this is, after all, social history in terms of art, and to Browning what has happened in painting is of value chiefly as showing concretely what has happened in the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Brentwick was a man of tallish figure and rather slender; with a countenance thin and flushed a sensitive pink, out of which his eyes shone, keen, alert, humorous, and a trace wistful behind his glasses. His years were indeterminate; with the aspect of fifty, the spirit and the verve of thirty assorted oddly. But his hands were old, delicate, fine and fragile; and the lips beneath the drooping white mustache at times trembled, almost imperceptibly, with the generous sentiments that come with mellow age. He held his back straight and ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... learned, and excellent, and so forth: but, ma chere, I want, not a white rabbit (of which he always reminds me), but a hero, even though he be a naughty one. I always fancy people must be very little if they can be finished off so rapidly; if there was any real verve in them, they would take somewhat longer to grow. Lord Chalk would do very well to bind in Russian leather, and put on one's library shelves, to be consulted when one forgot a date; but really even your Ulysses of a doctor—provided, of course, he turned out a prince in disguise, and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the characters that "he is endowed with the same talent for imitating people which Chopin, the pianist, possesses in so high a degree; he represents a personage instantly and with astounding truth." Liszt remarks that Chopin displayed in pantomime an inexhaustible verve drolatique, and often amused himself with reproducing in comical improvisations the musical formulas and peculiar ways of certain virtuosos, whose faces and gestures he at the same time imitated in ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... notwithstanding, has not yet altogether deserted the Paris that was her loyal sweetheart in the days when the tricolour was a prouder flag, its subjects a prouder people. There is something of the old spirit of it, the old verve of it, lingering still, if not in Montmartre, if not in the edisoned highways of the Left Bank, if not in the hitherward boulevards, then still somewhere. But where, ask you, is this somewhere? And I shall ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... mind, but several; he becomes not one poet, but many; for each actor in his drama has a share, and an important share, in the lyrical estro to which he gives birth. This it is which has imparted any verve, variety, or dramatic character they possess, to the ballads contained in this production. Turpin I look upon as the real songster of "Black Bess;" to Jerry Juniper I am unquestionably indebted for a flash melody which, without his hint, would never have been written, while to the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... from time to time much has been added: the Brahmans could do this, being custodians of the sacred literature. Yet in spite of all we get in them a lark's song,— but a spiritual lark's song, floating and running in the golden glories of the Spiritual Sun; a song whose verve carries us openly up into the realms of pure spirit; a wonderful radiance and sweetness of dawn, of dawn in its fresh purity, its holiness,—haunted with no levity or boisterousness of youth, but ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... shared by every one. I may be rash in praising a young man whose wings may melt in the sun; but when, as is the case with M. Leys, the artist possesses exact knowledge of the times and manners, when he has verve, dash, and deep feeling, he needs only to moderate ardor by reflection, and to ripen inspiration by study, in order ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... carnage and triumph. Ten thousand Austrians were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, whilst 80 guns and about two hundred baggage waggons fell as spoils to the French. In this brilliant victory Decaen's skill and valour, rapidity and verve, had been of inestimable value, as Moreau was prompt ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... an' thar's no barkeep nor nosepaint—none, in trooth, of the fav'rable adjuncts wherewith we makes a evenin' in Hamilton's hurdygurdy a season of social elevation, an' yet they pulls off their fandangoes with a heap of verve, an' I've no doubt they ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... each with its appropriate prologue and epilogue. They purport to have been collected in the abbeys of Touraine, and set forth by the Sieur de Balzac for the delight of Pantagruelists and none others. Not merely the spirit but the very language of Rabelais is caught with remarkable verve and fidelity, so that from the point of view of style Balzac has never done better work. A book which holds by Rabelais on the one hand and by the Queen of Navarre on the other is not likely, however, to appeal to that part of the English and American reading public that expurgates its ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... and marvellous romance, no one would ever have imagined the possibility of its production. It stands outside other things—a mixture of mad mirth and gravity, of folly and reason, of childishness and grandeur, of the commonplace and the out-of-the-way, of popular verve and polished humanism, of mother-wit and learning, of baseness and nobility, of personalities and broad generalization, of the comic and the serious, of the impossible and the familiar. Throughout the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... last of the series are the best. Signorelli has in them given the rein to his love of martial scenes, and painted them with great animation and verve. In No. VII. we have the scene "How S. Benedict discovers the deceit of Totila," and unmasks the shield-bearer, who, disguised as the King of the Goths, comes to prove the knowledge of the saint. In the background, a plain covered ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell |
