"Acrobatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wild regions and all professions (motoring, cycling, acrobatic and circus feats) which demand audacity, activity, love of adventure, and intense efforts followed by long periods of repose are eminently suited to criminals. There are cases on record in which young men have actually become thieves and even murderers ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... thought such things "all damned rot." Few functions connected with the arts appealed to his frankly Philistine spirit, which rejoiced in celebrations linked with the glories of the body; boxing and wrestling matches, acrobatic performances, weight-lifting exhibitions, and so forth. He regretted that bear-baiting and cock-fighting were no longer legal in England, and had, on two occasions, travelled from London to South America solely in order ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... motionless as the trees on the beach, and the reason for her state was clear. Her forefoot soared stiffly aloft till it was almost clear of the water; her stern was depressed; her decks listed to port till it was an acrobatic feat to ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... vaulting somersault. He lay, unable to rise, spatting the wind, breathing heavily. Such annoying energy I have never seen. We were now mad, muddy, and very resolute. We held him down till he lay quite still. Any well-considered, properly bred animal would have been ground to bone dust by such wondrous acrobatic movements. He was skinned in one or two places, the hair was scraped from his nose, his tongue bled, but all these were mere scratches. When we repacked him he ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... dancers carried long decorated reeds, which they flourished wondrously, and with which occasionally they executed the most surprising leaps. While there was a stateliness about their movements, there were also the most startling acrobatic surprises, made ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... our nervous system gets about so panic-stricken, it promptly begins throwing its cargo overboard, in the blind hope that this may somehow relieve the situation. The bile that we bring up at the end of these interesting acrobatic performances and which makes us feel so much better,—because we have now got the cause of the trouble out of our system,—is simply due to the prolonged vomiting, which has reversed the normal current and caused the perfectly healthy bile from our unoffending liver to pass ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... was the fearful, great boa-constrictor ... which turned out to be a double-jointed, lithe, acrobatic, boy-like girl whom we knew as Jessie ... Jessie, they whispered, was marked for death by consumption, if she didn't look out and stop smoking so many cigarettes ... she was slender and pretty—but spoke with an adenoidal thickness ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... comment (often satirical); again in a kind of Greek chorus to the drama, greatly to its injury; or in pure description, where it is hardly less offensive. Thus in "The Egoist" we read: "Willoughby shadowed a deep droop on the bend of his neck before Clara," and reflection shows that all this absurdly acrobatic phrase means is that the hero bowed to the lady. An utterly simple occurrence and thus described! It is all the more strange and aggravating in that it comes from a man who on hundreds of occasions writes English as pungent, sonorous and sweet as any writer in the history ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... ordinary thoughts in the most extraordinary phrases, the most far-fetched, unnatural, and out-of-the-way expressions. Their sentences perpetually stalk about on stilts. They take so much pleasure in bombast, and write in such a high-flown, bloated, affected, hyperbolical and acrobatic style that their prototype is Ancient Pistol, whom his friend Falstaff once impatiently told to say what he had to say like ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... screamed, and there were hoarse shouts from the men who witnessed Joe's fall. At first some thought it was only part of the acrobatic trick, but a single glance at the desperate struggles of the young trapeze performer ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... should like to see it very much indeed," were the exclamations of the two little boys. "You know I have never seen any acrobatic feats." ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fighting machine at the front, has been very much prolonged. It is no longer sufficient that he learns to fly and to master various types of machines. He now completes his training in schools where aerial shooting is taught, and in others where he practises combat, group manoeuvres, and acrobatic stunts such as looping the loop and the more difficult tricks. In all it requires from ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... the world swam dizzily, and went suddenly mad. The floor rose, and the roof fell, while cars and people performed impossible acrobatic feats above, below, and around him. Then, from afar off, he ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... the hillside their quaint "Spring o' the year," the song sparrows sang their tinkling melody from the live oaks, catbirds mewed from the thicket, and occasionally a linnet sang its rollicking solo as it performed queer acrobatic feats ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... with each instrument of the band careless of its customary uses. There are times when Strawinsky comes into the solemn conclave of musicians like a gamin with trumpet and drum. He disports himself with the infinitely dignified string-quartet, makes it do light and acrobatic things. There is one interlude of "Petruchka" that is written for snare-drums alone. His work is incrusted with cheap waltzes and barrel-organ tunes. It is gamy and racy in style; full of musical slang. He makes the orchestra ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... some popular operatic air. At the left of the pump stretched a narrow mirror, reflecting he gaily-colored wine-glasses and decanters which stood on each other's shoulders, and held up lemons, and performed various acrobatic feats on a shelf in front ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... night before was now making an excursion backwards and forwards from the bunk to the sofa, and the books that had been piled up on the sofa were scattered all over the room. It was evident that dressing was going to be an acrobatic performance. ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... of flying, when aviators attempted an acrobatic feat, they ran a far heavier risk than would be the case to-day; and for the simple reason that their machines, not having a strength sufficient to withstand any abnormal stresses, were likely to collapse ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White |
