"Vivacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was well made for my height; I had a good foot, a well turned leg, and animated countenance; a well proportioned mouth, black hair and eyebrows, and my eyes, though small and rather too far in my head, sparkling with vivacity, darted that innate fire which inflamed my blood; unfortunately for me, I knew nothing of all this, never having bestowed a single thought on my person till it was too late to be of any service to me. The timidity common to my age was heightened by a natural benevolence, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... marvellous work of its wonderful author."—New York World. "We touch regions and attain altitudes which it is not given to the ordinary novelist even to approach."—London Times. "In no other story has Mrs. Ward approached the brilliancy and vivacity of Lady ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... revealing not less but more of his natural self. "He has that petulance," Massimo d'Azeglio said, "which is exactly what they like in Paris." Abroad he could give this quality freer play than in Italy, where vivacity offends in a serious man. He charmed even those who did not share his opinions. At a dinner given by the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris to all the members of the Congress, he sat next to the Abbe Darboy, one day to succeed to the see and meet a martyr's death in ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... pianoforte part is played alone. The pronounced bravura character of the piece would warrant the supposition that it was written expressly for the concert-room, even if the orchestral accompaniments were not there to prove the fact. A proud bearing, healthful vigour, and sprightly vivacity distinguish Chopin on this occasion. But notwithstanding the brave appearance, one misses his best qualities. This polonaise illustrates not only the most brilliant, but also the least lovable features of the Polish character—ostentatiousness and exaggerated rhetoric. In it ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... holds equally the world and the dust of which worlds are formed together, and carries them on in their course through illimitable space through illimitable ages; and in this other power, even in this our first glimpse we see probably the contrasted force which is destined to give all that vivacity and mutual activity to particles that shall fit them as far as matter alone is concerned, for their wonderful office in the phenomena of nature, and enable them to bring forth the ever varying and astonishing changes which earth, air, fire and water present ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... knew the nature of the awful gulf of sin and misery into which he was now plunging with a headlong hilarious vivacity peculiarly his own. He was, indeed, well enough aware of the fact that he was a thief, and an outcast from society, and that he was a habitual breaker of the laws of God and man, but he was naturally ignorant ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... efforts, in journeyings oft, in tact that never failed in many a trying hour, in success most marvellous, in a vivacity and sprightliness that never succumbed to discouragement, in a faith that never faltered, and in a solicitude for the spread of our blessed Christianity that never grew less, James Evans stands ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... vivacity and ingenuity young people possess, the less are they likely to be amused with the toys which are usually put into their hands. They require to have things which exercise their senses or their imagination, their imitative, and inventive powers. The glaring colours, or the gilding ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... opening lines we subjoin the original—to the vivacity and spirit of which it is, perhaps, impossible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... the calf retains its appetite, but as the severity of the disease increases the animal shows less and less disposition to suck, and has lost all vivacity, lying dull and listless, and, when raised, walking weakly and unsteadily. Flesh is lost rapidly, the hair stands erect, the skin gets dry and scurfy, the nose is dry and hot, or this condition alternates with a moist and cool one. By this time the mouth and skin, as well ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Extravagant Abuse throws off the Edge of the intended Disparagement, and turns the Madman's Weapon into his own Bosom. In short, as to Rymer, This is my Opinion of him from his Criticisms on the Tragedies of the Last Age. He writes with great Vivacity, and appears to have been a Scholar: but, as for his Knowledge of the Art of Poetry, I can't perceive it was any deeper than his Acquaintance with Bossu and Dacier, from whom he has transcrib'd many of his best Reflexions. The late Mr. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... 1755. Few of the inhabitants of this world have commenced life under circumstances of greater splendor, or with more brilliant prospects of a life replete with happiness. She was a child of great vivacity and beauty, full of light-heartedness, and ever prone to look upon the sunny side of every prospect. Her disposition was frank, cordial, and affectionate. Her mental endowments were by nature of a very superior order. Laughing ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... till you're a male physician, then, and see," returned he, jumping into his chaise, and relieving his own nerves with a crack of the whip, which put new vivacity into those of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... is fashioned for great feats of daring, it has the rounded waist and martial shoulder-lines with which the Parisian tailor pacifies his conscience when he supplies English fashions. His stockings look ferocious. His dark eyes sparkle with inquisitiveness behind the pince-nez. He is vivacity incarnate, he is urbanity on a holiday. Mamma takes his arm and they trip past me. She is pretty, and would be plump if the art of the corsetiere had not abolished plumpness. Her hat conveys a greeting from the Rue Lafayette, her little high-heeled ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... cut short in his prophetic career. Like the ancient Jewish prophets, he was, in the highest degree, a censurer of the established authorities.[1] The extreme vivacity with which he expressed himself at their expense could not fail to bring him into trouble. In Judea, John does not appear to have been disturbed by Pilate; but in Perea, beyond the Jordan, he came into the territory of Antipas. This tyrant was uneasy at the political leaven which was so little concealed ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... both of argumentation and style it has often occurred to me that Mr. Tazewell occupied an intermediate position between Judge Marshall and Mr. Wickham. He has the strength of Marshall with something more of refinement in style and imagery, and more vivacity in the play of his reasoning; while he has a stricter line of demonstration than Wickham without his very decided elegance. In some physical as well as intellectual aspects he resembled Chief Justice ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... the dead. Naturally taciturn, unjoyful, and ever oppressed by that brooding consciousness of guilt hanging like a cloud over her memory, formless, vague, but never lifting, Fina's changeful temper and tumultuous vivacity were intensely wearisome to her. Nevertheless, she was forbearing if not loving, and the people said rightly when they said she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... know who Clotilda was, and why Franconia should summon her with so much solicitude. Presently a door opened: Franconia appeared at the top of the stairs, her face glowing with vivacity, her hair dishevelled waving in beautiful confusion, giving a fascination to her person. "I do wish she would come, I do!" she mutters, resting her hands upon the banisters, and looking intently into the passage: "she thinks more of fussing over ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... courts." Mrs. Gaines was a remarkable woman. She carried on a suit for many years against the city of New Orleans to recover property that belonged to her, and, through untold difficulties and delays, triumphed at last. She preserved her youth, beauty and vivacity until late in life. All who knew her can readily recall her bright, sparkling face, and wonderful powers of conversation. In her long experience in litigation, she became well versed in the laws regarding real estate and the right of descent. Mrs. Gaines was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... very much the moment he beheld him. Green's eyes, indeed, were raised to mark the opening door, but still there was a gloomy want of interest in their glance which was utterly unlike the quick and sparkling vivacity which had characterized them ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... found in the books that are almost wholly farcical, Le nez d'un notaire (1862); Le roi des montagnes (1856); L'homme a l'oreille cassee (1862); Trente et quarante (1858); Le cas de M. Guerin (1862). Here his most genuine wit, his sprightliness, his vivacity, the fancy that was in him, have free play. "You will never be more than a little Voltaire,'' said one of his masters when he was a lad at school. It was a true ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a fact worth remarking. If melancholy comes over us by the margin of a great water, another indelible law of our nature so orders it that the mountains exercise a purifying influence upon our feelings, and among the hills passion gains in depth by all that it apparently loses in vivacity. Perhaps it was the light of the wide country by the Loire, the height of the fair sloping hillside on which the lovers sat, that induced the calm bliss of the moment when the whole extent of the passion that lies beneath a few insignificant-sounding words is divined ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... diamonds—to the Warder who has been most attentive and devoted to him during his stay in gaol. He is said to have stated that he freely forgave the infant whose insulting conduct provoked his outburst, as he did the nursemaid for not restraining her charge's vivacity. This intimation, at his express desire, will be conveyed to the parents of the deceased, and will doubtless afford them ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... head—and, preparing to write, to fill out the order forms himself, fumbles a great deal with his glasses, taking off and putting on again. A friend discovering him here, he springs up and greets him with much vivacity. His orders written out, he delivers them into the hands of the manager of the shop with whom he chats a bit. . ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... morning Annie Forest opened her eyes with that strange feeling of indifference and want of vivacity which come so seldom to youth. She saw the sun shining through the closed blinds; she heard the birds twittering and singing in the large elm-tree which nearly touched the windows; she knew well how the world looked at this moment, for often and often in her old light-hearted ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... novel,—to have utterly abandoned realism, and in its place to have imposed upon us scenes, characters, and actuating motives which have figured over and over again in book and play, and to which she has not succeeded in imparting any special vivacity or charm. The novel falls far below "Guenn," in which the author riveted and deepened the impression of her first ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... the slightest sign of that rich Leinster brogue which was so apparent in their father. This, however, may have arisen from an English mother, or an English education. Suffice it to say that in no respect could they be distinguished from English ladies, except in a certain vivacity of manner, which in the latter is not common. O'Halloran was evidently a gentleman, and his house showed that he was at least in comfortable circumstances. What his business now might be I could not tell. What his past had been was equally uncertain. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... head, and uttered with pert vivacity: "I never likes compliments, sir! But the young man ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... is considered to be about two hundred thousand, of whom fifty thousand are Indians. "Essentially a Frenchman, (says Mr. Hall,) the Canadian is gay, courteous, and contented. If the rigours of the climate have somewhat chilled the overflowing vivacity derived from his parent stock, he has still a sufficient portion of good spirits and loquacity. To strangers and travellers he is invariably civil; and he seems to value their good word beyond their money. He is considered parsimonious, because all his gains arise from ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... host was somewhat more interesting. He was a tall, handsome man, of about eight-and-forty, with a high forehead, and features strongly impressed with the sober character of thought. He had but little of the French vivacity in his manner; and without looking at his countenance, you would still have felt insensibly that he was the eldest of the party. His wife was at least twenty years younger than himself, mirthful and playful as a child, but ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and he was a little bit sorry that he had done so, for while Miss Hastings was very agreeable, there was a certain acidulous sharpness about her nose and uncompromising thinness about her lips which no amount of laughing vivacity ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... had given to his features, he was a presentable person. Flying side-whiskers made his mouth appear grotesquely wide, and the play of strong feelings had produced vicious wrinkles on his spare face. He appeared to be a man of energy, vivacity and vulgarity, reminding one of a dinner of pork and cabbage. He was soon forgotten in the excitement of a delightful day, whose glories came to a brilliant end in that banquet which introduced the nephew of Senator Dillon ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... unconscious of the power of her own charms, strove with all the unsuspecting confidence of youth to amuse a visitor whom her honoured brother pronounced worthy of esteem and pity, and willingly exerted her arch vivacity to divert a melancholy of which no one knew the cause. Evellin soon discovered that he interested the fair recluse, and though she was not the first lady who viewed him with favour, he was flattered by an attention which he could not impute to extrinsic qualities. "She certainly pities me," ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... prove to every one concerned that we're in earnest. It's exactly because we're in earnest that, dash it, we needn't be so awfully particular. I mean, don't you know, we needn't be so awfully afraid." He showed a vivacity, an intensity of argument, and if Maisie counted his words she was all the more ready to swallow after a single swift gasp those that, the next thing, she became conscious he paused for a reply to. "We didn't come, old girl, did we," he pleaded straight, "to stop right away for ever ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... saloons, of the Duke de Vendome, the Prince de Conti, and of the gay Duke of Orleans, the latter of whom was destined afterwards to exercise so much influence over his fate. The Duke of Orleans was pleased with the vivacity and good sense of the Scottish adventurer, while the latter was no less pleased with the wit and amiability of a prince who promised to become his patron. They were often thrown into each other's society, and Law seized every opportunity to instil ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... you thought so," I responded dryly; "but I believe Mr. Macdonald has been interested in Francesca from the outset, partly because her beauty and vivacity attracted him, partly because he could keep her in order only by putting his whole mind upon her. On his side, he has succeeded in piquing her into thinking of him continually, though solely, as she fancies, for the purpose of crossing swords with him. If they ever drop ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... size, thick and stumpy, with a body too long, and with short bowed legs; his face was not at all ugly, but good-natured, with round red little cheeks and small grey eyes that were by no means wanting in vivacity. Pursuant to an old obsolete French fashion, he was elaborately curled and powdered every day; but it was on Sundays that his costume was especially striking. For then he wore, to take one example, a striped silk ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and with the cleared and lightened air that he had worn ever since that little spark of hope had been left to burn and shine undamped by dissipation or worldly policy. Bertha also was changed. She had grown tall and womanly, her looks beyond her age, and if her childish vivacity were gone, the softened gravity became her much better. It was Phoebe's report, however, for which he chiefly longed, and he was soon seated beside her on the way to Albury-street, while the others ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Watson's critical eye took note of it. The hair, touched lightly with grey, had receded slightly on the temples, and the more ample brow, heavily lined, gave a nobler shelter than of old to the still astonishing vivacity of the eyes. The carriage of the head, too, was prouder and more assured. Fenwick, indeed, as far as years went, was, as Watson knew, in the very prime of life. Nevertheless, there was in his aspect, as he sat there, a prophetic note of discouragement, of ebbing vitality ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... musicians were already playing so loud that they could pretend not to hear his order; having once been young, they played louder and gayer than ever, and Caroline danced with grace and vivacity, her pink, filmy dress swirling about her, her agile arms playing in supple, tenuous gestures ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... critiques, and digressions upon statistical details are far less copious than Varchi's. But in idiomatic purity of language he is superior. Varchi had been spoiled by academic habits of composition. His language is diffuse and lumbering. He lacks the vivacity of epigram, selection, and pointed phrase. But his Storia Fiorentina remains the most valuable repertory of information we possess about the later vicissitudes of the republic, and the charm of detail compensates for the lack of style. Nerli is ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... got to the end of our procession, "Blast me," cries he, with an air of vivacity, "I never saw the park so thin in my life before; there's no company at all to-day; not a single face to be seen." "No company," interrupted I, peevishly; "no company where there is such a crowd! why man, there's too much. What are the thousands that have been laughing ...
— English Satires • Various
... that she is very young, a mere girl and make allowances. She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she is color-mad: ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... luxuriant, and of the finest texture and richest brown. Her other beauties must be left to the imagination; but it ought not to be omitted that she was barely eighteen, and had all the freshness, the innocence, and vivacity of that most charming period of woman's existence. No wonder she ravished every heart. No wonder, in an age when love-making was more general even than now, that she was beset by admirers. No wonder her father's apprentice became ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... looked at him through his spectacles, and under them, and over them, and nodded his head approvingly, and then nodded to me, as much as to say, 'This is just the man; you were quite right;' and then turned to Jack and said a few hearty words, and then did and said everything over again with unimpaired vivacity. As to Jack himself, he was quite as much delighted with Mr. Pickwick as Mr. Pickwick could possibly be with him. Two people never can have met together since the world began, who exchanged a warmer or more ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... visited her Madame de Staemer must have been a vivacious and a beautiful woman. Her vivacity remained and much of her beauty, so that it was difficult to believe her snow-white hair to be a product of nature. Again and again I found myself regarding it as a powdered coiffure of the Pompadour period and wondering why ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... dictionary to depict the passions, armed with a tube of superior flake-white to paint the portrait of the insufferable sun. No art is true in this sense: none can "compete with life": not even history, built indeed of indisputable facts, but these facts robbed of their vivacity and sting; so that even when we read of the sack of a city or the fall of an empire, we are surprised, and justly commend the author's talent, if our pulse be quickened. And mark, for a last differentia, that this quickening of the pulse is, in almost ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... excessive vivacity was that, when he wanted any thing done, he expected the person nearest to him should not only instantly obey, but conceive what he meant from the pointing of his finger, the turn of his head, or the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... in these times to think well of the Gascon race. The King set the example, knowing how useful such men were like to be to him in days to come; and these lads, who spoke English almost as their mother tongue, and were so full of spirit, grace, and vivacity, rapidly rose in favour both with Sir James himself and with his retinue. No auspices could well have been more favourable for the lads upon their first entrance into the great world, and they only wished that Father Anselm could hear of their ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... education, the unfair position of woman in the labour-market, or merely the irony of fate. And this is a pity because, though the manner of the story is very episodic, there are scenes and conversations of considerable vivacity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... Ganlook; again he recalled the fervent throbs his guilty heart had felt as he looked upon this fair creature, at one time the supposed treasure of another man. Now she was Miss Calhoun, and her gray eyes, her entrancing smile, her wondrous vivacity were not for one man alone. It was marvelous what a change this sudden realization wrought in the view ahead of him. The whole situation seemed to be transformed into something more desirable than ever before. His ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Roman Imperial history. But it has other claims to the consideration of readers. It makes Roman Imperial history thoroughly intelligible, because events are philosophically treated, and their bearing upon each other is rendered clear. It is written with vivacity, force, and elegance. The style is the style of a gentleman, and the sentiments are those of a Christian scholar. There is not a paragraph in it which we could wish to see omitted, or essentially changed. It has won for its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... French blood his mother gave him," said Mrs. Mansfield as the door closed. "If he had been all French, one might have delighted in him, taken him on the intellectual side, known where one was, skipped the coldness and the irony, clung to the wit, vivacity and easy charm. But he's a modern Frenchman, boxing with an Englishman and using his feet half the time. And that's dreadful. In an English drawing-room I don't like the Savate. Now tell us, tell us! I am so thankful he ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... privileges of a national man-of-war in the port of Civita Vecchia. Antonelli replied to my communication of the protest that she would be admitted to the port with the same privileges as a man-of-war of any other nation, and the reply was given with almost explosive promptness and vivacity. But until a request for relaxation of the passport regulations in favor of Southerners was made by some one professing to speak on behalf of our own government, which was in my second year, he never permitted the least bending of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... some vivacity, of his experiences in the world of trade. The Captain poured another ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... information and amusement from the present volume. The work itself will have a standard place in all Collections of Voyages and Travels; a place which it will fully merit, by the industry and ardour of research conspicuous throughout, as well as by the spirit vivacity and good sense of the general narrative."—Quarterly ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... cultivation, such as was and perhaps remains unknown in the rest of Europe. Conversation became a fine art. "I hate war," said one; "it spoils conversation." The leisured classes found their keenest relish in delicate irony, in piquancy, in contained vivacity, in the study of niceties of observation and finish of phrase. You have a picture of it in such a play as Moliere's Misanthropist, where we see a section of the polished life of the time—men and women making and receiving compliments, discoursing ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... behind,—inflicted with his teeth a grievous wound upon my person; where, I need not specify. At length, when thus prostrate on the ground, one of those bright ideas, common to minds of men of genius, struck me. I forthwith sprang to my feet, drew forth my cutto, circulated the same with much vivacity among their several and respective corporeal systems, and every time I circulated the same I felt their iron grasp relax. As cowardly recreants, even to their own guilty friendships, two of these miscreants, though but slightly perforated by my cutto, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... the book range from the charm of Sterne to the vivacity of Lady Dorothy Nevill, from a eulogy of Poe to a discussion of Disraeli as a novelist. The variety, the scholarship, the portraiture of the book make it a pleasure to read; and, even when Mr. Gosse flatters in his portraits, his ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... ensued all took a part. But toward the end of the meal, Joe noticed that Jim was a little more subdued than was usual with him, and that some of the sparkle and vivacity had vanished from Clara's ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... completely shaven, others wear a kind of turban affording shade to the forehead and eyes; among them all we see the same qualities and defects which we find in the bodies: a hardness of expression, heaviness, absence of vivacity, and yet withal a vigour of reproduction and an accurate knowledge of human anatomy. These are instances of what could be accomplished in a city of secondary rank; better things were doubtless produced in the great cities, such ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... literature. It is otherwise with the reign of Nero. To this belongs a constellation of some of the most brilliant authors that Rome ever produced. And they are characterised by some very special traits. Instead of the depression we noticed under Tiberius we now observe a forced vivacity and sprightliness, even in dealing with the most awful or serious subjects, which is unlike anything we have hitherto met with in Roman literature. It is quite different from the natural gaiety of Catullus; equally so from the witty frivolity of Ovid. It is not in the least meant to be frivolous; ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... shall never go through the place again without regarding him as its crowning interest.... Now a sweeter creature [than Youwarkee] is not to be found in books; and she does him immortal honour. She is all tenderness and vivacity; all born good taste and blessed companionship. Her pleasure consists but in his; she prevents all his wishes; has neither prudery nor immodesty; sheds not a tear but from right feeling; is the good of his home and the grace of his ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... without striking a blow, a profitable composition with the Parliament. Nevertheless, despite the drawbacks of subject-matter, the autobiography is a very interesting piece of English prose. The narrative style, for all its coxcombry and its insistence on petty details, has a singular vivacity; the constructions, though sometimes incorrect ("the edict was so severe as they who transgressed were to lose their heads"), are never merely slovenly; and the writer displays an art, very uncommon in his time, in the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... rejected every offer of service, favour, or promotion; and any unwonted proof of kindness from Adrian seemed, instead of making him more familiar, to offend him into colder distance. The easy humour and conversational vivacity which had first rendered him a welcome guest with those who passed their lives between fighting and feasting, had changed into a vein ironical, cynical, and severe. But the dull barons were equally amused ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... well-knit muscles and a deep chest that might have belonged to a youth of eighteen instead of seventeen. Compared with Tim Otis, who was of the same age, Don Gilbert suffered on only two counts—quickness and vivacity. Tim, well-muscled, possessed a litheness that Don could never attain to, and moved, thought and spoke far more quickly. In height Don topped his friend by almost a full inch and was broader and bigger-boned. They were both, in spite of ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Francis said this with great vivacity, then taking up some ashes he scattered them over the head of the novice, repeating, "There is the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... quite untrained—she was only fourteen—but it was pleasant to listen to. She was beginning to show the combined traits of her mother and father—Jennie's gentle, speculative turn of mind, combined with Brander's vivacity of spirit and innate executive capacity. She could talk to her mother in a sensible way about things, nature, books, dress, love, and from her developing tendencies Jennie caught keen glimpses of the new worlds which Vesta was to explore. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... desert of Sahara, impelled perhaps by rash curiosity, perhaps by higher motives; he had lost his way there, and had at last, wearied to death, reached one of those fertile islands of that sea of sand which are called oases. Then followed, sparkling with oriental vivacity, a description of the wonderful things seen there, now filling the hearts of his hearers with sweet longing, and then again making their hair stand on end with horror, though from the strange pronunciation of the speaker and the flowing rapidity of his words the half was scarcely understood. ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... two or three seconds Malcolm Sage noticed the change in the girl. Although he could not see her face very clearly, the vivacity of her bearing and the ready laugh were suggestive of a gaiety contrasting strangely with the tragic figure he had seen ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... as one of the elder pupils in the school I attended. I was too young at that time to pay much attention to passing events, but I afterward learned that, even then his conduct was a source of much anxiety and sorrow to his parents; his ready talent, great vivacity, and love of amusement continually led him into mischief and caused him to be disliked by many of their neighbors. It was in vain that the villagers complained, in vain that his father admonished and his mother wept; still the orchards were robbed, the turkeys chased into the woods, and the ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... been expected to raise him to the highest honours of his profession. He had an extensive knowledge of books; yet he had mingled much with polite society, and is said not to have wanted either grace or vivacity in conversation. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... decline the proposal it contains to pay a visit here. I trust I may be excused for desiring an interval of complete freedom from such distractions as have been hitherto inevitable, and especially from guests whose desultory vivacity makes their presence ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of and facing the other players and rapidly repeats this verse, performing some action that the other players immediately imitate—such as beating a drum, playing a fiddle, sawing wood. Without pausing he varies his actions, the others continuing to follow his movements. Rapidity of time and vivacity determine the ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... entertainment presided over by an Alexander and a Thais, a drunk conqueror and a courtezan. Dryden himself, we have seen, thought this the best ode that ever was or would be written in the English language. In a certain sense he was right. For vivacity, freedom of movement, and eloquence, it has never been equalled. But there are some odes—such as Coleridge's "Ode to France" and Wordsworth's "Power of Sound"—which as certainly excel it in strength of imagination, grandeur of conception, and unity of execution ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... fine frosty night, with no wind and the thermometer below zero, the brain works with much vivacity; and the next moment I had seen the circumstance transplanted from India and the tropics to the Adirondack wilderness and the stringent cold of the Canadian border. Here then, almost before I had begun my story, I had two countries, two of the ends of the earth involved: ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mrs. Forrester nodded, smiled, acquiesced. She was rather fond of Eleanor. Their talk was for each other. Miss Woodruff, unheeded, but with nothing of the air of one consciously insignificant, sat looking before her. Beside Eleanor's vehemence and Mrs. Forrester's vivacity she made Gregory think of a tranquil landscape seen ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... brought up, and are continually warned that this thing or that is "bad form." As a result, when they enter Society they are more or less in fear of saying or doing something that will not be considered suitable. As a matter of fact they are not lacking in energy or vivacity, but these qualities are suppressed in public, and only come to the surface in the society of intimates. American girls from childhood upwards are much more independent; they have much more freedom and encouragement in coming forward than ours. The vivacity and liberty expected of an American ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... deportment, and in your family, fortunes, and expectations, happy as a man can wish to be. Then the knowledge I had of you in Italy (although, give me leave to say, your conduct there was not wholly unexceptionable) convinces me that you are brave: and few gentlemen come up to you in wit and vivacity. Your education has given you great advantages; your manners are engaging, and you have travelled; and I know, if you'll excuse me, you make better observations than you are governed by. All these qualifications make it not at all surprising that a young ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... dining-room just as Mrs. Herne had seated Barker and Brookes at the table. As Stella took her seat the two young men thought they had never seen her face so beautiful, with its sweet smile and calm expression. Her vivacity brought out the wit and humor of the two guests, who were always considered good company at any one's table. Penloe said little, because he saw how the two young men were enjoying Stella's bright conversation. After dinner the ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... Gustave—they congratulated each other. A match so brilliant would be the redemption of the family. The young man at last began to fancy himself the favoured of the gods. What if Madelon seemed a little dull—a little wanting in that vivacity which is so pleasing to frivolous minds? she was doubtless so much the more profound, so much the more virtuous. If she was not bright and varied and beautiful as some limpid fountain dancing in summer sunlight, she was perhaps changeless ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... character of Mr Browning's, to stand midway between the bulky work of Mr. Cross and the very slight sketch of Miss Blind, was much to be desired, and Mr. Browning has done his work with vivacity, and not without ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... charming vivacity, whose eyes were ever ready for laughter, and whose tone of address of itself provoked the noblest of replies. Many loved her; all admired. She passed (I will suppose) by this street or by that; she sat at table in such and ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... dead stock. In transacting their domestic business, they would be obliged to employ a costly, instead of a cheap instrument of commerce; and the expense of purchasing this costly instrument might damp somewhat the vivacity and ardour of their excessive enterprise in the improvement of land. It might not, however, be necessary to remit any part of the American revenue in gold and silver. It might be remitted in bills drawn upon, and accepted by, particular ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... yielding to the dance, or reclining in its indolent symmetry; to watch the beautiful play of coloring upon her cheek, and the moonlight transit of her smile; to study her faultless features in their delicate and even thoughtful repose, or when lighted up into conversational vivacity, was to forget everything, save the exceeding and bewildering fascination before me. Like the silver veil of Khorassan it shut out from my view the mental deformity beneath it. I could not reason with myself about her; I had no power of ratiocination ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... hesitation at the opening of the seventh line introduces a new cadence, a lengthy lingering upon the last syllables of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth closes a grave complaint. So, also by an effect of quantities, the last six lines rise out of melancholy into their proper character of appeal and vivacity: an exhortation. ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... am like you in that respect. I can not help admiring that life and vivacity. Ah! (a sigh) I wish I could make poor Jane a little more ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a feverish vivacity to her manner, which Sir Robert Lowther imputed to gratified vanity at his attentions and he continued complacently by her side, till Mrs. Barrington said,—"I think, Miss Leigh, the children should go to bed," and Bluebell understood ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... organiser and ruler of men and women. Her labours continued without intermission till, at the age of sixty-seven, she was struck down by her last illness. "This saint will be no longer wanted," she said, with a sparkle of her old vivacity, when she knew that she was ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... of nature, the climate and the scenery, exert an appreciable and an acknowledged influence on the mental characteristics of a people. The sprightliness and vivacity of the Frank, the impetuosity of the Arab, the immobility of the Russ, the rugged sternness of the Scot, the repose and dreaminess of the Hindoo are largely due to the country in which they dwell, the air they breathe, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... party was very agreeable. Next to me sat a little abbe, who appeared to be in years, but full of vivacity, and seemed to be much esteemed by every person present. During the time of terrour (as the French emphatically call the gloomy reign of Robespierre) the blood of this good man, who, from his wealth, piety, and munificence, possessed considerable influence ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... rippling gold; she seemed a diademed queen. Her forehead, bluish-white in its transparency, extended its calm breadth above the arches of her eyebrows, which by a strange singularity were almost black, and admirably relieved the effect of sea-green eyes of unsustainable vivacity and brilliancy. What eyes! With a single flash they could have decided a man's destiny. They had a life, a limpidity, an ardour, a humid light which I have never seen in human eyes; they shot forth rays like arrows, ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... friend!" exclaimed the Senator, with all that vivacity of pantomimic gesture so characteristic of the South, "the reality far exceeds the imagination. She is an angel! Even in our country, famous for its beautiful women, Dona Rosarita ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... of the thoughts that now stirred in Hester's mind, with as much vivacity of impression as if they had actually been whispered into her ear. And there was little Pearl, all this while, holding her mother's hand in both her own, and turning her face upward, while she put these searching questions, once and again, and still ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a native and natural gift, which can never be taught, never communicated, and with his mind set not on his reward, but on excellence, on style, on matter, and even on the not wholly unimportant virtue of vivacity, a man will succeed, or will deserve success. First, of course, he will have to "find" himself, as the French say, and if he does not find an ass, then, like Saul the son of Kish, he may discover a kingdom. One success he can hardly miss, the happiness ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... expressions, and give them vivacity, verbs of self-motion (such as go, come, rise, get, &c.) are sometimes suppressed, being suggested to the mind by an emphatic adverb, which seems to be put for the verb, but does in fact ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... against yours; but I was pleased with Evson's manner, and asked him to come and take a stroll on the shore, that I might know something more of him. Do you know, I never found a more intelligent companion. He was all life and vivacity; it was quite a pleasure to be with him. Being new to the sea, he didn't know the names of the commonest things on the shore, and if you had seen his face light up as he kept picking up whelk's eggs, and mermaid's purses, and zoophytes, and hermit-crabs, and bits of plocamium or coralline, and asking ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... may be as well measured by his mode and morality of dining, as by any other circumstance. At Mr. Fields's, soon after entering the house, I heard the brisk and cheerful notes of a canary-bird, singing with great vivacity, and making its voice echo through the large rooms. It was very pleasant, at the close of the rainy, east-windy day, and seemed to fling ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... great archetype. When we look at Pope's Iliad upon this understanding, we cannot fail, I think, to admit that it has merits which makes its great success intelligible. If we read it as a purely English poem, the sustained vivacity and emphasis of the style give it a decisive superiority over its rivals. It has become the fashion to quote Chapman since the noble sonnet in which Keats, in testifying to the power of the Elizabethan translator, testifies rather to his own ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... the other to Bath; one is "always young and always pretty," the other a rouged old woman. But it is unfair to push the contrast too far. Mrs. Piozzi at seventy or eighty was as sprightly, as good-natured, as Mrs. Thrale at thirty or forty. She never lost her vivacity, never her desire to please. But it is a sadly different thing to please Dr. Johnson, Burke, or Sir Joshua, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... with Divine Goodness," which is what Smith always means by the great word, Faith. It is something in the hearts of men which by experience "feels the mighty insinuations of Divine Goodness"; complies with it; perpetually rises into co-operation with it, and attains its true "life and vivacity" by partaking of it.[39] Christ is thus the Node, or Centre, of both Grace ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... too hot," she began casually, and then proceeded with increasing vivacity and conviction to the objects that worried her most. "And those—those ruffles," she protested, "they don't look a bit nice being so long!" Resentfully she rubbed an edge of the purple dress between her fingers. "And a little girl like you,—with such bright red hair,—oughtn't ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... soon as the letter was finished. Shaughnessy never could have carried on such an interview, lasting four hours of a busy life. His talks to the press must be curt and comprehensive—or else elliptical. He had no exuding vivacity. When I talked to him—or listened to him—he was cold and exact. He left his chair only to walk erectly to the window. He deviated not a syllable from the subject in hand—the system. He worshipped ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... not by affections, acted in the name of and in trust for kings, and not as their avowed constitutional and ostensible masters. I think it impossible that any king, when he has recovered his first terrors, can cordially infuse vivacity and vigor into measures which he knows to be dictated by those who, he must be persuaded, are in the highest degree ill affected to his person. Will any ministers, who serve such a king (or whatever he may be called) with but a decent appearance of respect, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the visible and motor images of the spoken and written word; and in the positive study of quantities, proportions, and number. The same concomitant phenomena of "patience" and "perseverance" then manifest themselves, together with those of vivacity, activity, and joy, characteristic of the spirit when the internal energies have found their keyboard, the gymnasium in which they exercise themselves ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... the slightest inclination to marry. His mother, always a practical woman, did not press the question of marriage, deeming that with his disposition he would stand a better chance of married peace when he had expended a good deal of what she called his vivacity; and his father, who came of very long-lived people, always said that no man should take a wife before he was thirty. As Brook did not gamble immoderately, nor start a racing stable, nor propose to manage an opera troupe, the practical lady felt that he was really a very good young man. His father ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... keenly set against their brilliance. The straight-held head, the lifted arms, the short, slender waist, the long, long sweep of her skirts made her seem taller than she actually was; and the strong, bright growth of her hair and the vivacity of her face made her ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... man, who felt, subsequent to his misfortune, as he had perhaps dimly fancied it before, that his career lay in his legs, and was now irrevocably cut short. He taught the boy boxing, and shooting, and the arts of fence, and superintended the direction of his animal vigour with a melancholy vivacity. The remaining energies of Algernon's mind were devoted to animadversions on swift bowling. He preached it over the county, struggling through laborious literary compositions, addressed to sporting newspapers, on the Decline of Cricket. It ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... than most of the sketches in Professor Tyler's well-known 'History,' these monographs have much of the brevity of their original purpose; and they are marked by the same picturesqueness of treatment, the same vivacity of expression, and the same felicity of statement, that characterize ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... head of a large publishing house in Vienna, for six variations on a waltz by him (Diabelli). The dance was always a favorite musical form with Beethoven in his lighter moments, and the variation form,—capable of a degree of sprightliness, vivacity and originality in the right hands which give it an entrancing effect, to which we come again and again with pleasure, was something peculiarly his own at every stage of his artistic career. His earliest essays in composition are in this form. Variations occupy a prominent part in all his works, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... Junior, punctual to his time, came with it. His vivacity of the morning had all sparkled out; he greeted Allan with his customary politeness, but without his customary smile; and, when the headwaiter came in for orders, his dismissal was instantly pronounced in words never ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... neatly built young man of twenty-four, with a short, smartly trimmed black beard, clear, well shaped eyes, and an ingratiating vivacity of expression. He is, from the fashionable point of view, faultlessly dressed. As he comes along the drive from the house with Mrs Whitefield he is sedulously making himself agreeable and entertaining, and thereby placing ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... morning I had scarcely begun to dress, when a young officer entered my room. He was of small size, with irregular features, but his sun-burned face had remarkable vivacity. "Pardon me," said he in French, "that I come so unceremoniously to make your acquaintance. I learned yesterday of your arrival, and the desire of seeing at last a human face so took possession of me that I could wait no longer. You will understand ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... sat quite still. She was suddenly an altered woman. All the natural gayety and vivacity seemed to have faded from her features. There were suggestions of another self, zealously kept concealed. It was a curious revelation. Even her tone, when she spoke, was altered. The words seemed to be dragged from ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not been at sea one day," says Mrs. Knapp, "before all the saloon occupants were charmed by this lovely young woman. Her vivacity was infectious, and her abandon was always of a ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... was a small principality, as it was called, containing some thirteen hundred square miles, about the size of the State of Rhode Island. Christian Augustus, the prince of this little domain, had a daughter, Sophia, a child rather remarkable both for beauty and vivacity. She was one year younger than Peter, and Elizabeth fixed her choice upon Sophia as the future spouse of her nephew. Peter was, at this time, with the empress in Moscow, and Sophia was sent for to spend some time in the Russian capital before the marriage, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... that of a young woman with all the impulsiveness of the Spanish character, spoiled as an only daughter, who had been reared in indulgence, and with the entire neglect which hinders the education of all the young ladies of her country. Time has calmed the vivacity of her youth; and madame, the Duchess of Friuli, has since given an example of most faithful devotion to duty, and great strength of mind in the severe trials that she has endured. In the loss of her husband, however grievous it might be, glory had at least some consolation to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... more hardly felt because it succeeded, and succeeded suddenly, upon a period of bewildering prosperity. Early in the year 1888 it was observed that Mr. Gallivant's dark red mustaches were curling away at the ends with a lightness and vivacity that they only displayed when things were going well. The quality of the curl in the ends of his mustaches invariably indicated to his friends the state of the market. They could tell exactly whether stocks were up or down and how much so. The sensitive rhododendron is not more surely ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... the first rehearsal of the opera Kelly says in his Reminiscences: "I remember Mozart well at the first general rehearsal, in a red furred coat and a gallooned hat, standing on the stage and giving the tempi. Benucci sang Figaro's aria, 'Non piu andrai,' with the utmost vivacity and the full strength of his voice. I stood close beside Mozart, who exclaimed, sotto voce, 'Brava! brava! Benucci!' and when that fine passage came, 'Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla gloria militar,' which Benucci gave in a stentorian voice, the effect was quite ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... me very strongly, too,—so lonely as he is here, struggling against the world, with bitter feelings in his breast, and yet talking with the vivacity and gayety of his nation; making this his home from darkness to daylight, and enjoying here what little domestic comfort and confidence there is for him; and then going about all the livelong day, teaching French to blockheads who sneer at him, and returning at about ten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... meal the musicians had little rest. One tune was played and immediately another was struck up to take its place, and the gay company at the tables laughed and chattered the while with the utmost vivacity and glee. ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... added, but for want of room, anecdotes which show the quick decision and vivacity of her mind. Her face was in harmony with this combination. Her brow is as ideal and the eyes and lids as devout and modest as the Italian picture of the Madonna, while the lower part of the face has the simplicity and childish strength of the Indian race. Her picture presents the finest specimen ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... must own myself extremely blameable, because I knew the world and human nature, I will say, better than the lady, who never before had been trusted into it upon her own feet: and who, notwithstanding that wit and vivacity which every one admires in her, gave herself little time for consideration. I ought, therefore, to have more carefully guarded against inconveniencies, which I knew were so likely to arise from such intimacies; and the rather, as I hinted, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... bit above himself'; further, that the interest in the poll was tremendous and universal. She said there were 'crowds and crowds' round the Town Hall. Even Mary, generally a little placid and dull, had caught something of the contagious vivacity. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... was a match for any four. Gallic ancestry gave her a vivacity that could easily mount to fury. Her large eyes flashed a scorching denial at her accusers. Her slender, eloquent arms constantly menaced the tableware. Her high, clear soprano voice rose to what would have been a scream had it not possessed so pure ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the artist's own emotions. Now gently gliding, now gracefully leaping, now violently stirred, penetrated, or laboriously contending with the natural expression of passion, the stream of sound, in primitive vivacity, bears over into the hearer's soul unimagined moods which the artist has overheard from his own, and finally raises him up to that repose of everlasting beauty of which God has allowed but few of his elect favorites ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... Well, I never was any good at dissembling. I shouldn't wonder if even old Peppmuller noticed something through his double convex lenses. But however crazy I may have been as an undeclared suitor,' he went on with a return to vivacity, 'I am going to be much worse now. As for your congratulations, thank you a thousand times, because I know you mean them. You are the sort of uncomfortable brute who would pull a face three feet long if you thought we were making a mistake. By the way, I can't help being an ass tonight; I'm obliged ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... of the squire's, and held rather a comfortable farm of about eighteen or twenty acres. Ellen herself had, when very young, been, by some accident or other, brought within the notice of Mrs. Folliard, who, having been struck by her vivacity, neatness of figure, and good looks, begged permission from her parents to take the little girl under her care, and train her up to wait upon her daughter. She had now been eight years in the squire's family—that is, since her fourteenth—and ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... wife; but my French always deserted me entirely when I had to answer her, and so she soon drew away and left me to her lord, who talked of French politics, Africa, and domestic economy with great vivacity. From Ostend a smoking-hot journey to Brussels. At Brussels we went off after dinner to the Parc. If any person wants to be happy, I should advise the Parc. You sit drinking iced drinks and smoking penny cigars under great old trees. The band place, covered walks, etc., are all lit up. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... engaged at the theatre would go to parties, where she amused herself and her friends in a thousand different ways—making caricatures, doggerel verses, riddles, conundrums, bouts-rimes, dancing, jesting, laughing, and singing. Full of exhaustless vivacity, she seemed more and more to disdain rest as her physical powers grew weaker. The enthusiasm with which she was received and followed everywhere was in itself a dangerous draught on her nervous energies, which should have been ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... the mean fraternal correlation was .539.[107] In athletic power the coefficient was still higher, .72 between brothers, .75 between sisters and .49 between brothers and sisters. Measurements of mental characteristics—vivacity, assertiveness, introspection, popularity, conscientiousness, temper, ability and handwriting proved to be as easily correlated, the mean coefficients being; brothers, .52, sisters .51, brothers ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... the public in form. All his power of pleasing is damped by solicitude, and his cheerfulness dashed with apprehension. Impressed with the terrors of the tribunal before which he is going to appear, his natural humour turns to pertness, and for real wit he is obliged to substitute vivacity. His first publication draws a crowd; they part dissatisfied; and the author, never more to be indulged with a favourable hearing, is left to condemn the indelicacy of his own address or their want of discernment. For my part, as I was never distinguished for ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... execution; that is, at the eve of a general election for a new parliament, when a minister ought carefully to avoid every step which may give umbrage to the body of the people. The earl of Egmont, who argued against the bill with equal power and vivacity, in describing the effect it might have upon that occasion, "I am amazed," said he, "that this consideration makes no impression.—When that day, which is not far off, shall arrive, I shall not fear to set my foot upon any ground of election in the kingdom, in opposition ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... perceived no echo of it in the boyish garrulity of his later talk. Hudson was a tall, slender young fellow, with a singularly mobile and intelligent face. Rowland was struck at first only with its responsive vivacity, but in a short time he perceived it was remarkably handsome. The features were admirably chiseled and finished, and a frank smile played over them as gracefully as a breeze among flowers. The fault of the young man's whole structure was an excessive want of breadth. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... be nice and cool tomorrow, when we steam into the great ocean," said Miss Mavis, expressing with more vivacity than she had yet thrown into any of her utterances my own thought of half an hour before. Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that it would probably be freezing cold, and her son murmured that he would go and try the drawing-room balcony and report upon it. Just as he was turning ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... as well as master of ceremonies; and he had a way of speaking for others that suggested considerable social tact and versatility. Thus, when there was a lull in the conversation, he started it again, and imparted to it a vivacity that was certainly remarkable, as Helen thought. At precisely the proper moment, he seized Miss Hornsby, and bore her off home, tittering sweetly as only a young girl can; and the others, following the example thus happily set, left Helen and her aunt to themselves, and to the repose that tired ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... to the straight road of observation. The sensuality so prevalent appears to me to arise rather from indolence of mind and dull senses, than from an exuberance of life, which often fructifies the whole character when the vivacity of youthful spirits begins to subside into ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... muscular form. Over all was thrown a short green coat without buttons. His long dark-brown beard, that fell in rich curls upon his chest, added dignity to his appearance. His full, broad countenance was expressive of good-humor and honesty. His small, penetrating eyes sparkled with vivacity.] ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... a future fine lady, in velvets and satins and furs, bewitching every-body by her gay spirits, her piquant vivacity, and the loving heart that lay underneath all the nonsense and gave ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... over all the party, but no one alluded to the sad cause. And so, things reverted to their ordinary channel in a few days. Julia had become again full of life and spirits, though to close observers there was something forced and unnatural about her mirth and vivacity. And one thing Amos noticed with special pain—it was that she carefully avoided ever being alone with him; if they were accidentally left together by themselves, she would in a moment or two make some excuse ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... who was reputed to have had domestic relations elsewhere. But although subjugated and exorcised, she at least was reminiscent. To my inquiries about the Sluysdaels, she answered with a slight return of her old vivacity:— ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sadness rested once more upon the countenance of the good Duke's daughter. She and Conrad were seen together no more now. The Duke grieved at this. But as the weeks wore away, Conrad's color came back to his cheeks and his old-time vivacity to his eye, and he administered the government with a clear and steadily ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... what they had talked about after that. She had been conscious of Transley's eyes often on her, and of a certain spiritual exaltation within her. She could not remember what she had said, but she knew she had talked with unusual vivacity and charm. It was as though certain storehouses of brilliance in her being, of which she had been unaware, had been suddenly opened to her. It was as though she had been intoxicated by a very subtle wine which did ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... as befits a critic of the critic, we beard the lion in his very den. We challenge a definition he gives of the critic. In the seventh volume of the "Causeries," article "Grimm," he says: "When Nature has endowed some one with this vivacity of feeling, with this susceptibility to impression, and that the creative imagination be wanting, this some one is a born critic, that is to say, a lover and judge of the creations of others." Why did M. Sainte-Beuve make Goethe sovereign in criticism? Why did he think Milton peculiarly ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... had learnt from her singing to admire beyond all the fashionable trash of the day, were gratified with untiring good-nature. Somehow I thought that she avoided my eye, and answered my remarks with less than her usual archness and vivacity. I could bear it on this evening less than ever; a hair will turn the scale, and I had just been, half ludicrously, half seriously, affected by Welsh nationality. One cannot help warming towards a community ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... with your remark. It expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I have sometimes heard uttered with malignant dulness. The satire of the remark is essentially true of Boston,—and of all other considerable—and inconsiderable—places with which I have had the privilege of being acquainted. Cockneys think London is the only place ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... to see the vivacity and the language of his country thus break out unawares. The host, who had no idea that his guests understood his words, was astonished when Huon addressed him in the dialect of his country. Immediately confidence was established between ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... down that avenue now and then he looked. Near him a Syrian bear, quite tame, with a sweet face and tufted silver fur, gambolled prodigiously. Up and down a neighboring tree two lemurs chased with that grace and diabolic vivacity which those enchanting animals alone possess. Ringed-horned antelopes, the ankles slender as the stylus, the eyes timid and trustful, pastured just beyond; and there too a black-faced ape, irritated perhaps by the lemurs, turned indignant somersaults, the tender ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... with her companion, a resolute-looking man scarce entering upon the prime of life, with a Gipsy complexion, but a bearing in which it is not difficult to recognise the soldier. He is talking to his protectress—for such she is—with a military frankness and vivacity, which even to that royal personage, accustomed though she be to exact all the respect due to her rank, appear by no means displeasing. The lady is verging on the autumn of her charms (their summer must ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... low-fed children is far from conclusive. In the third place, besides size, we have to consider energy. Between children of the meat-eating classes and those of the bread-and-potato-eating classes, there is a marked contrast in this respect. Both in mental and physical vivacity the peasant-boy is greatly inferior to the son of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... good mother broke in, in her turn, with vivacity speaking "Son, you are certainly right. We parents set the example. 'Twas not in time of pleasure that we made choice of each other, And 'twas the saddest of hours, that knitted us closely together. Monday morning,—how well I remember! the very day after That ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... when the pianist had finished, Swann crossed the room and thanked him with a vivacity ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... respects. By dint of memory, and an excellent ear, she soon had at her finger ends whole passages of Scripture, together with a number of psalms and hymns, from one to the other of which she ran with a vivacity and heedlessness, that often pained her teacher. She was soon the leader of the little choir, and could sing, with wonderful correctness, "Shall we gather at the river?" "I think when I read that sweet story of ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... mode of attack. Margaret herself could find nothing to say to her aunt, and she, therefore, also remained silent. Lady Ball was so far successful in this, that when three minutes were over her niece had certainly been weakened by the oppressive nature of the meeting. She had about her less of vivacity, and perhaps also less of vitality, than when she first entered ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... among others, gave to such books as Essays in Criticism, Friendship's Garland, and Culture and Anarchy, an interest and a value quite independent of their literary merit. And they are displayed in their most serious and deliberate form, dissociated from all mere fun and vivacity, in his Discourses in America. This, he told the present writer, was the book by which, of all his prose-writings, he most desired to be remembered. It was a curious and ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... skill. Labour requiring the agency of fire can only be given abundantly in cold countries; labour requiring suppleness of body and sensitiveness of touch, only in warm ones; labour involving accurate vivacity of thought only in temperate ones; while peculiar imaginative actions are produced by extremes of heat and cold, and of light and darkness. The production of great art is limited to climates warm enough to admit of repose in the open air, and cool enough to render such repose delightful. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... difficulties, however, incidental to the wretched state of the American finances abroad, and the imperfect relation of his country with the French court, were well calculated to cool any enthusiasm excited by his conquest; and a man of less vivacity and perseverance than Jones might have dropped the service. He persevered. His lieutenant, Simpson, after various refractory proceedings, had sailed home in the Ranger, when an arrangement was finally made with Le Ray de Chaumont, the negotiator of the French court, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... there was an invasion of the small cabin by a large and loquacious family, who had been making an excursion on the island railway. This family might remind an antiquated novel-reader of the delightful Brangtons in "Evelina;" they had all the vivacity of the pleasant cousins of the heroine of that story, and the same generosity towards the public in regard to their family affairs. Before they had been in the cabin an hour, we felt as if we knew every one of them. There was a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... knowingly on one side, and her bright hair was wonderfully done up. Dressed richly as she was, and assisted by the rejuvenating magic of jewels, she produced, in the shadow of the screen, a notable effect of youthful vivacity, which only the insult of close inspection could destroy. With sinuous gestures she waved Mr. Enwright's metaphorical palm before the approaching George. Her smile flattered him; her frail, dinging hand flattered him. He had known her in her harsh morning moods; ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... words of mine, he exclaimed with his usual energy and vivacity: 'Habes me consentientem, labes me consentientem.' From that moment all coldness between us was at an end, and we approached, without any embarrassment, a host of questions in one conversation in which I endeavored, as I had ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... perception of the comic element in men and things, of that delightful freshness and liveliness, which threw such a charm about the former writings of Timothy Titcomb. No story can be pronounced a failure which has vivacity and interest; and the volume before us adds to vivacity and interest vigorous sketches of character and scenery, droll conversation and incidents, a frequent and kindly humor, and, underlying all, a true, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... thought of marriage with an old man; and the two following form a pair treating the same theme, one from the girl's point of view, the other from the lover's. The later verses of My Love She's but a Lassie Yet, however, though full of vivacity, have so little to do with the first or with one another that the song seems to be a collection of scraps held ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... parsonage. The irrepressible buoyancy of her character cannot be kept under even by the severity of conduct which belongs to the home of the Doctor. If she yields rigid obedience to all the laws of the household, as she is taught to do, her vivacity sparkles all the more in those short intervals of time when the laws are silent. There is something in this beaming mirth of hers which the Doctor loves, though he struggles against the love. He shuts his door fast, that the snatches of some profane song from her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... this speech, "that he can sit there, and sit, and sit, and sit, when he knows at this hour I am always somewhere about the house or grounds, and never in my room? Well, if he likes to sit there, let him sit"; and with this she looked up with some vivacity into the face of her landlord and asked him if even his pigeons and his chickens were blooded, and if the pigs were also of good descent. As she spoke ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... were in the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a moment. I returned it to its maker, with whom I had so contumelious a passage that the street outside was crowded from wall to wall with gossips looking on and listening. The pad changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it would be more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's heads; and, at any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and spoke with a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scarce a trait in his character that is not reflected somewhere in his music, and hardly a characteristic of his music that one does not find quaintly echoed in some recorded saying or doing of the man. His placid and even vivacity, his sprightliness, his broad jocularity, his economy and shrewd business perception of what could be done with the material to hand, his fertility of device, even his commonplaceness, may all be seen in the symphonies. At rare moments ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman |
