"Briskness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brushwood, the flower-patches, spreading away to the hills that swell afar until the peaks of the Atlas, cool with everlasting snow, close the view. One is tempted to linger there lovingly, though darkness is falling. There is a gift of blandness and briskness in the very breathing of the air. When you have had your fill of the beauties on the land side, turn to the sea, meet the evening breeze that comes floating up with a flavour of iodine upon it, range ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... saluted the colours as he passed, BONAPARTE (attended by all his retinue, including a favourite Mamaluk whom he brought from Egypt), took a central position, when the different corps successively filed off before him with most extraordinary briskness; the corps composing the consular guard preceded those of the garrison and all the others: on inquiry, however, I find, that this order is ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... aunty'd keep the best for you. O, let you alone for dat! Go way!" And, with that, aunty gave George a nudge with her finger, designed to be immensely facetious, and turned again to her griddle with great briskness. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... him, for at previous practice, taking a gun from a sergeant, he stood in front of us and said, "Let me show you how Rip Van Winkle here in the second squad comes to parade rest," and gave us a ludicrous example of slowness and slovenliness. Then he illustrated, in briskness and correct position, just how we should ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... desk he found another telegram from Styles. It was imperatively worded and as he read it the briskness and satisfaction went from his bearing. He walked to the window and stood there looking down at the city, and, as it had been in looking ahead at the State-house, he now looked out over the city really seeing and understanding it, not merely taking ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... since, reading, when some one tapped at the door, and Master Simon entered. He had an unusually fresh appearance; he had put on a bright green riding-coat, with a bunch of violets in the button-hole, and had the air of an old bachelor trying to rejuvenate himself. He had not, however, his usual briskness and vivacity; but loitered about the room with somewhat of absence of manner, humming the old song—"Go, lovely rose, tell her that wastes her time and me;" and then, leaning against the window, and looking upon the landscape, he uttered a very audible sigh. As I had not been accustomed to ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... on these works of art was in all respects, shabbiness excepted, unlike the former personage. His whole appearance and manner denoted briskness. Though threadbare, he expressed to the crowd that poverty had not subdued his spirit, or tinged with any sense of shame this honest effort to turn his talents to some account. The writing which formed a part of his composition was conceived in a similarly cheerful tone. It breathed the following ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... alert little woman with a provincial accent and the briskness of a cock-sparrow, whose prettiness, combined with pertness, ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... indeed, but from me only, by whose procurement it is furnished with little of wisdom, and so with the less of disquiet? And when once lads begin to grow up, and attempt to write man, their prettiness does then soon decay, their briskness flags, their humours stagnate, their jollity ceases, and their blood grows cold; and the farther they proceed in years, the more they grow backward in the enjoyment of themselves, till waspish old age comes on, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... world and the chill of an autumn morn. I was as stiff and sore as if I had been whipped, my clothes were sodden and heavy, and not till I had washed my face and hands in the burn and stretched my legs up the hill-side did I feel restored to something of my ordinary briskness. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... the gaunt man, with evident relief but no abatement whatever of his briskness, and he very hastily walked over to the right wings, where Jimmy, the house electrician, piloted the trio with equal relief through the clustered mass of singers to the door behind the boxes. As they emerged ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... previous period of prosperity, when work was abundant and wages were very high, he could not, had he begged on bended knee, have induced his men to save a single penny, or to lay by anything for a rainy day. The fancy waistcoating trade had uniformly had its cycles of alternate briskness and depression; but experience, however stern its teachings, could not teach unwilling learners. It was at this period that Mr. Sikes was reading the late Archbishop Sumner's "Records of Creation," and met with the following passage: "The ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... envy George Moore, for an interval the critic of the Speaker, now the London Nation, because he could and did. I can remember him at an Academy Press View making the interminable round with a business-like briskness until, perhaps in the first hour and the last room, he would come upon the painting that gave him the peg for his eloquence, make an elaborate study of it, tell us his task was finished, and hurry off exultant. But envy him as I might, I couldn't borrow his briskness. I had to plod on all morning ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... with three other mariners—Cullen, Wife, and Neale—this Irish pirate shipped himself on board a French snow at Cork in November, 1721, for a passage to Nantes. Owing to Roche's briskness, genteel manners, and knowledge of navigation, the master used occasionally to place him in charge of the vessel. One night a few days out a pre-arranged mutiny took place, the French crew being butchered and thrown overboard. The captain, who pleaded for mercy, was also thrown ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... Granny Hall, looking like another creature, smoke-dried and withered indeed, but all briskness and animation. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... violets, and had sat down, hot and tired, under a lovely chestnut, with my lap full of flowers which I was arranging and tying up in bunches in order to carry them home more easily. I heard footsteps, which I recognised by their briskness and firmness, and looking up I saw my brother approach, walking, as usual, erect, with his head well thrown back but with stern lines in his face which I had not seen there before. I looked up smiling, expecting his usual kind greeting, but instead ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... ourselves into the idea that it was all great fun, but it was a shallow pretense. The professor was very silent by the time we had finished. Ukridge had been terrible. When the professor began a story—his stories would have been the better for a little more briskness and condensation—Ukridge interrupted him before he had got halfway through, without a word of apology, and began some anecdote of his own. He disagreed with nearly every opinion he expressed. It is true that he did ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... minutes left of our noisy time," said King, with a suspicious briskness in his tone. "Come on, girls, let's have ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... hand and with all the stalwart briskness of the flag-presentation's day and hour Hilary Kincaid stepped into the room and halted, as large-eyed as on that earlier occasion, and even more startled, before the small figure ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... country; his lady, who loves the pleasures of the town, balls in the Strand, and masques; Device, the fantastic gallant,—these are well-known figures in Shirley's plays. No other playwright of that day could have given us such exquisite poetry as we find in Captain Underwit. The briskness, too, and cleverness of the dialogue closely recall Shirley; but it must be owned that there are few plays of Shirley's written with such ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... for it, say I keep it there, and told you where to find it, if you had need to go to my room. The descent is easy down the wall into the ditch; and so, once more farewell, until I see thee again, my dear son." And with this the intrepid Father mounted the buffet with great agility and briskness, stepped across the window, lifting up the bars and framework again from the other side, and only leaving room for Harry Esmond to stand on tiptoe and kiss his hand before the casement closed, the bars fixing as firmly as ever, seemingly, in the stone ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... The small streets were sloppy and full of pools, which reflected the flaming lamps irregularly, and by accident, like fragments of some other and fallen world. Syme felt almost dazed as he stepped through this growing confusion of lights and shadows; but his companion walked on with a certain briskness, towards where, at the end of the street, an inch or two of the lamplit river looked like a bar ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... at the next public meeting of the section, applauded vigorously when the President referred to the need of more briskness in France and England and asked for a private interview after the meeting was over. In a few well-chosen words he offered his services to run messages over the frontier. Off his platform the President was quite a practical man and, though ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various |
