"Lightness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shadow Suma seemed to flow over the ground, looking neither to right nor left, the massive paws falling with the lightness of leaves dropping from the trees. A frightened agouti scampered across her path and stopped, frozen with fear, and a green ribbon-like snake drooping in festoons from a low-growing branch hastily drew up its coils as the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... made, for the sake of lightness, of woven elm withes, and varnished dark brown, was shaped not unlike a baby carriage. Such a wagon body costs about eight dollars in Kazan, where great numbers of them are made. It was set upon stout, unpainted running-gear, guiltless of springs, in ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... accompanied by a tall, slim, and graceful dog. It was he, not the man, that caught my eye and for an instant snatched my thought from Little Boy Jim rescuing a rocking-horse at the risk of his life. He was a police dog with the dignity of a prince and the lightness of a plume. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... counterpart of the one in which Contarini had drunk her health at midnight. Her father had given it to her as it came from the annealing oven, still warm after long hours of cooling with many others like it. She loved it for its grace and lightness, and as for the rose, it was the one she had made Zorzi give back to her yesterday. She meant to keep it in water till it faded, and then she would press it between the first page and the binding of her parchment missal. It would keep some of its faint ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... found a lady travelling—from Sasellano, I understood; and I had the privilege of aiding her to cross the ford." Dieppe spoke with a calculated lightness. ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... Earth! where'er thou movest Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, And the souls of whom thou lovest Walk upon the winds with lightness, Till they fail, as I am ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... seemed now to wake up to his work, and glanced at the sails, which were all set, and giving his orders sharply and well, a pull was taken at a sheet here and a pull there, the helm altered, and in spite of the lightness of the breeze the Kestrel began to work along with an increase of speed of quite ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... a particular kind of clay, called 'sea-spray,' from its fineness and lightness, from which the boles of pipes are made in Turkey—often at enormous prices, and much imported into Germany, where they are in great request. Such is the extent of my knowledge on the subject; or perhaps of my ignorance. But, in fact, I know ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... any more politics with him. We dined together, I calm and in the best of spirits; we went to a musical farce, and he watched me glumly as I showed my lightness of heart. Then I went alone, at midnight, to the Chicago Express sleeper—to lie awake all night staring at the phantoms of ruin that moved in dire panorama before me. In every great affair there is a crisis at which one must stake all upon a single throw. I had staked all upon Wall ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... me—quite drunk, I feel that the outcome would have been happier for us all. So far as I have thought along these lines, it seems to me that if one is to be kicked at all, one must be kicked good-naturedly. I mean to say, with a certain camaraderie, a lightness, a gayety, a genuine good-will that for the moment expresses itself uncouthly—an element, I regret to say, that was conspicuously lacking from the brief activities ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of Elfride. Ah, there she was! On the lawn in a plain dress, without hat or bonnet, running with a boy's velocity, superadded to a girl's lightness, after a tame rabbit she was endeavouring to capture, her strategic intonations of coaxing words alternating with desperate rushes so much out of keeping with them, that the hollowness of such expressions was but too ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... however, none of the qualifications which ensure social success. He was cold and grave even to sadness, reserved and timid even to excess. His mind wanted brilliancy and lightness; he lacked the facility of repartee, and the amiable art of conversing without a subject; he could neither tell a lie, nor pay an insipid compliment. Like most men who feel deeply, he was unable to interpret his impressions immediately. He required ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... sufficient grounds of your peace. Lay down the solid and satisfying grounds of faith, of imputed righteousness, and of salvation by Jesus Christ, and this shall be a foundation of lasting peace. Sense makes not a good conscience, there is much lightness and vanity in it, and the rule it proceeds by is changeable, but faith establishes the soul, and makes it ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... description of that place, I may well do it here. St. Louis now bids fair to rival ere long the "Queen of the West;" Mr. Irving describes her as a small trading place, where trappers, half-breeds, gay, frivolous Canadian boatmen, &c., &c., congregated and revelled, with that lightness and buoyancy of spirit inherited from their French forefathers; the indolent Creole of St. Louis caring for little more than the enjoyment of the present hour; a motley population, half-civilized, half-barbarous, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... and inquiring mind. While I clung with new and persistent hope to the thread which had been put in my hand, I was too conscious of the maze through which we must yet pass, before the light could be reached, to feel that lightness of spirit which in itself might have lessened the hours, and made bearable those days of forced inaction. To beguile the way a little, I made a complete analysis of the facts as they appeared to me in the light of this latest bit of evidence. The result was not strikingly ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... in less than two hours," said he. "You've plenty of time, but if you're not back before the first puff, I'll sail without you, as sure as you're born." North assured him of his punctuality. "Don't wait for me, Captain, if I'm not here," said he with the lightness of tone which men use to mask anxiety. "I'd take him at his word, Blunt," said the Commandant, who was affably waiting to take final farewell of his wife. "Give way there, men," he shouted to the crew, "and wait at the jetty. If Mr. North misses his ship through your ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... them no remarkable or striking passages, with the exception of those in sixths and octaves, and I beg my sister not to devote too much time to these lest she spoil her quiet and steady hand and make it lose its natural lightness, suppleness and fluent rapidity. What, after all, is the use? She is expected to play the sixths and octaves with the greatest velocity (which no man will accomplish, not even Clementi), and if she tries she will produce a frightful ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... up. It would be a charming solution to the puzzle if it were to explode while I stood there, in my nightshirt, looking on. It is true that the box weighed very little. Probably, as I have said, the whole affair would not have turned the scale at a couple of ounces. But then its very lightness might have been part of the ingenious inventor's little game. There are explosives with which one can work a very satisfactory amount of damage with considerably less than a ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... that semi-bantering lightness of manner which sometimes aggravated, and always puzzled, his colleagues, "we will not give ourselves trouble over that: the matter is out of our hands. Let us rather think ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... with terror. Instead of summoning a physician, to ascertain the nature of her symptoms, he called a negro and his cart from Bush Hill. In vain the neighbours interceded for this unhappy victim. In vain she implored his clemency, and asserted the lightness of her indisposition. She besought him to allow her to send to her mother, who resided a few miles in the country, who would hasten to her succour, and relieve him and his family from the danger and trouble of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... back amongst the cushions of her chair and looked across at him with interest, an interest which presently drifted into sympathy. Even the lightness of his tone could not mask the inwritten weariness of the man, the tired droop of the ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... came, with light firm steps, up the bank, not exactly approaching them, but turning to the house-door, the party under the trees separated; the gentlemen, attracted by the lightness and beauty of the canoe, went down to the water's edge to look at it more closely. Bella wanted to see the papoose, and perhaps to bargain with its mother for some of her work; Mrs. Bellairs and Lucia remained alone, when the former, turning to say something to her companion, ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... no one understands the full luxury of rapid motion without bodily exertion, till they have sat behind a pair of first-class American trotters. The "wagon," to begin with, is a mechanical triumph. It is wonderful to see such lightness combined with such strength and stability. I have seen one, after five years' constant usage over fearfully bad roads. It was owned by a man noted for reckless pace, where many Jehus drove furiously; not a bolt or joint had started, the hickory of shafts and spokes still seemed tough as hammered ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... again a curious feeling that sometimes I was not alone was present in my mind. In a way I got used to it, because after being in the trenches and looking in the face of death as a kind of hobby the feeling of release and lightness that comes over one drives all other troubles clean away. But after a while this feeling seemed to be growing in poignancy. In fact at the end of the first fortnight I ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... runner left the team and headed swiftly for the scene of the accident. As he approached, Emerson noted the fellow's flowing parka of ground-squirrel skins, from which a score of fluffy tails fell free, and he saw that this was no Indian, but a half-breed of peculiar coppery lightness. The man ran forward till he neared the edge of the opening where the tide had caused the floes to separate and the cold had not had time as yet to heal it; then flattening his body to its full ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... laugh whatever happens—that is the great thing! It isn't age I dread. But I'd hate to lose that lightness with which those blessed ones we call the young can move through the world, that self-renewing freshness which converts every daybreak into a dewy new world and mints every sunrise into a brand new life ... I asked Gershom ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... writing prose fiction—insight into and appreciation of character, combined with much tragic force and a real gift for description—there is reason to think that he would have been stilted and artificial in dialogue, and altogether wanting in lightness of hand. Crabbe acquiesced in his wife's decision, and the novels were cremated without a murmur. A somewhat similar fate attended a set of Tales in Verse which, in the year 1799, Crabbe was about to offer to Mr. Hatchard, the publisher, when he wisely took the opinion of his rector ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... far in the wilds and mountains I hunt, Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee, In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game, Falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side. The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... and Blanquette, I may here mention incidentally, had been my instructress in the art. Seeing her thick-set, coarse figure, and holding your arm around her solid waist as you waited for the bar, you would not have dreamed of the fairy lightness it assumed the moment feet moved in time with the music. If life had been a continuous waltz no partner of hers less awkward than a rhinoceros could have avoided falling in love with her. But waltzes ended all too soon and the thistle-down sylph of a woman ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... always something bracing and sustaining about it; and the days in which Hugh learnt the truth about himself had nothing of gloom or sadness about them. The discovery indeed surprised him with a certain lightness and freshness of spirit. He smiled to think that he had entered the vale of humiliation, and had found it full of greenness and musical with fountains. A great flood of peace flowed in upon him; and all the delicate love of nature, of trees ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... world, a dark care, an immovable fate, bearing down with the weight of his presence all aspiration, all budding delights of children and young persons: all must crouch before him, and uphold his glory with the sacrificial death of every impulse, every admiration, every lightness of heart, every bubble of laughter. Or—which to a mind like Robert's was as bad—if he did not punish for these things, it was because they came not within the sphere of his condescension, were not worth his notice: of ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... courts your attention,—the waving branches speak to you,—the hazel thicket, bending to the weight of some advancing animal, puts you on your guard; the heart beats, not for the rustling of a silk gown, nor for the hurried footfall of woman treading with fairy lightness on the fallen leaves. The syren voice is not about to whisper softly in your ear, "Are you there, violet of my heart!" nor are you about to reply, "Angelic being, moss-rose of my soul, let me press your sweet lips?" What you are waiting for are the wild beasts of the ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... her extreme haste, the heightened colour, and the glowing eye, are all very handsome, in spite of the coarseness in perspective. The poor footman can scarcely keep up with her; he has not found the last twenty years at Glanyravon productive of the same lightness of step to him, as to his young mistress, and wishes she were ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... from brushing a fly off the nose, or suppress a cough or sneeze. The same exhibition of collective action is seen in the care with which the children move to avoid making a noise during their work. The lightness with which they run on tiptoe, the grace with which they shut a cupboard, or lay an object on the table, these are qualities that must be acquired by all, if the environment is to become tranquil and free from disturbance. One rebel is sufficient to mar this ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... of the day when it was announced that the meeting would be held, groups of colored people of all ages and both sexes began to assemble. They were all talking earnestly as they came, for some matter of unusual interest seemed to have usurped for the moment their accustomed lightness and jollity of demeanor. Nimbus, as the most prosperous and substantial colored man of the region, had always maintained a decided leadership among them, all the more from the fact that he had sought thereby to obtain no advantage ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... trees; behind him the glass doors stood open to the lawn, where birds piped cheerfully and the trees murmured of summer. But he saw Hanaud stepping quickly from place to place, with an extraordinary lightness of step for so big a man, obviously engrossed, obviously reading here and there some detail, some custom of the ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... lady where I am to be found to deliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like the thirsty swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear discourses?" (This with a cow-like lightness.) ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... torments, every toil of earth Juno's hatred on him could impose, Well he bore them, from his fated birth To life's grandly mournful close. Till the god, the earthly part forsaken, >From the man in flames asunder taken, Drank the heavenly ether's purer breath. Joyous in the new unwonted lightness, Soared he upwards to celestial brightness, Earth's dark heavy burden lost in death. High Olympus gives harmonious greeting To the hall where reigns his sire adored; Youth's bright goddess, with a blush at meeting, Gives the nectar to her lord." S. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... Nature. The taking a Lesson well, and the Manner of Pushing and Parrying which I have just described, may be attained to by Practice only, but some other things are necessary to make an Assault well; for besides the Turn of the Body, the Lightness, Suppleness and Vigour which compose the exteriour Part, you must be stout and prudent, qualities so essential, that without them you cannot act with a good Grace, nor to the purpose. If you are apprehensive, besides, that you don't push home, or justly, fear making you keep back your Thrust, or ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... wore on. Sally was still running like a swallow for lightness, but Andrew knew by her breathing that she was giving vital strength to the effort. He talked to her constantly. He told her how Gray Peter ran behind them. He encouraged her with pet words. And Sally seemed ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... that she should be composite built; that is, that for the sake of lightness and strength combined, her frame should be of steel, with an inner skin of thin steel plate, and an outer planking of two thicknesses of mahogany. The ribs were to be arranged diagonally crossing the keel at an angle of forty-five degrees, and intersecting each other at right angles, thus converting ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... could Piggie, fresh from a two-day fight, be left to the mercies of an inexperienced rider. Three inches shorter than his master, Kruger Bobs weighed fifty pounds the more, and he rode with the resilient lightness ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... development of dirigible balloons. To begin with he was able to use a new and efficient form of motor destined to become popular, and capable, as the automobile manufacturers later showed, of almost illimitable development in the direction of power and lightness. Except for the gasoline engine, developed by the makers of motor cars, aviation to-day would be where it was a quarter of a ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... the Latin labarium, vexillum, that excellent scholar, the late lamented Mr. Price, was the first, I believe, to show frequently signified a shield; which was, probably for lightness, made of the wood of the lime tree, and covered with skin, or leather of various colours. Thus we have "sealwe linde" and "hwite linde" in Caedm., ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... for Mara that so much of her life had been passed in wild forest rambles. She looked frail as the rays of moonbeam which slid down the old white-bearded hemlocks, but her limbs were agile and supple as steel; and while the party went crashing on before, she followed with such lightness that the slight sound of her movements was entirely lost in the heavy crackling plunges of the party. Her little heart was beating fast and hard; but could any one have seen her face, as it now and then came into a spot of moonshine, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in the rugged grandeur of the scenery here, in the whiteness of the snow, the blackness of the rocks which peeped out from its voluminous wreaths, the lightness of the atmosphere, and, above all, the impressive silence, which possessed an indescribable charm for the romantic mind of Alric, and which induced even the stern matter-of-fact Glumm to tread with slower steps, and to look around him ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... Plato's lightness of touch is found in the Laches. The dialogue begins with a discussion about the education of the young sons of Lysimachus and Melesias. Soon the question is raised "What is courage?" Nicias warns Laches about Socrates; the latter has a trick of making men review their lives; his ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... quantity that three eggs would make in the usual way, take nine table-spoonsful of snow, and stir in a quart of rich milk that has been setting in a very cold place, so that it will not melt the snow, and destroy its lightness; put in a tea-spoonful of salt, and enough wheat flour to make a stiff batter; have ready a frying-pan with boiling lard, and drop a spoonful in a place as with other fritters, and set the remainder in a cold place till the first are done. Eat them with ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... in life in general," said Panshine, turning his head now to the right, now to the left, "lightness and daring—those ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... lightness and warmth, which can be obtained from the union underclothes, a princess skirt and dress, with a shoe that allows full development and use of the foot. While decoration and elegance are desirable, they should not ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... wife? my Celia? wife? [RE-ENTER CELIA.] —What, blubbering? Come, dry those tears. I think thou thought'st me in earnest; Ha! by this light I talk'd so but to try thee: Methinks the lightness of the occasion Should have confirm'd thee. Come, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... she were inseparable sisters, and she even began involuntarily to address her as "thou," as she had done Raisky when her heart responded to his kindness. As these thoughts whirled in her head, she had a sensation of lightness and freedom, like a prisoner whose fetters have ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... westwards a semi-dome, which in its turn rests upon three small semi-domes. The nave is thus covered completely by a domical canopy, which, in its ascent, swells larger and larger, mounts higher and higher, as though a miniature heaven rose overhead. For lightness, for grace, for proportion, the effect is unrivalled. The walls of the building are reveted with marbles of various hues and patterns, arranged to form beautiful designs, and traces of the mosaics which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... their comeliness and complaisant manners, the lightness of their wit and the prestige of their success, Hertford heard murmurs that the young Cowpers were too lucky by half, and that the Cowper interest was dangerously powerful in the borough. It was averred that the Cowpers were making unfair capital out of liberal professions: and when the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... 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 on affairs with easy lightness, flitting backwards and forwards with a thousand petty hurries, and among them one singular figure, hoarse, rough, sombre, moving with a chilling reality in the midst of frolicking shadows. But the shadows were all in all to ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... which they floated seemed like a groundwork of polished steel, in which the sun shone with dazzling brilliancy. The tops of the icy islets were pure white, and the sides of the higher ones of a delicate blue colour, which gave to the scene a transparent lightness that rendered ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... to write. I have resolved to start at my Saint- Antoine tomorrow or the day after. But to begin a protracted effort I need a certain lightness which I lack just now. I hope, however, that this extravagant work is going to get hold of me. Oh! how I would like not to think any more of my poor Moi, of my miserable carcass! It is getting on very well, my carcass. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... where the air one breathed smelled like flowers and everything was lovely in a new way, and when one moved one felt so light that movement was delightful, and when one wakened one had not quite got over the lightness and for a few moments felt as if one would float ...
— In the Closed Room • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... join later in the settlement; that he had his own methods of disposing of his wares, and (darkly) that his proprietor and the world generally had better not interfere with him; that (with a return to more confidential lightness) he had already "worked the Wild West Injin" business so successfully as to dispose of his wares, particularly in yonder house, and might do even more if not prematurely and wantonly "blown upon," "gone back on," ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... than a mile in diameter. In this Call-duck there is not only no decrease, but an actual increase in the weight of the wing-bones relatively to those of the wild duck; and this probably is consequent on the remarkable lightness and thinness of all the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... each hand alternately. By long practice a native can support himself with his toes on very small notches, not only in climbing but while he cuts other notches, necessary for his further ascent, with one hand, the other arm embracing the tree. The elasticity and lightness of the simple handle of the mogo or stone hatchet employed (see Figure 5 above) are well adapted to the weight of the head and assist the blow necessary to cut the thick bark with an edge of stone. As the natives live chiefly on the opossum, which they find ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... the third day, and the same man came to meet Etain, she said to him: "It is not you at all I come to meet here, and why is it that you come to meet me? And as to him I came to meet," she said, "indeed it is not for gain or through lightness I bade him come to me, but to heal him of the sickness he is lying under for my sake." Then the man said: "It would be more fitting for you to come to meet me than any other one. For in the time long ago," he said, ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... opened my door to a knock, and Follet's bloodshot eyes raked me eagerly. He came in with a rush, as if my hit-or-miss bungalow were sanctuary. I fancied he wanted a drink, but I did not offer him one. He sat down heavily—for all his lightness—like a man out of breath. I saw a pistol-butt sticking out of his pocket and narrowed my eyes upon him. Follet seldom looked me up in my own house, though we met frequently enough in all sorts of other places. It was full five minutes before ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... wrapping of fur conceals the muscular play and effort that is so obvious in the hound that pursues him, and he comes bounding along precisely as if blown by a gentle wind. His massive tail is carried as if it floated upon the air by its own lightness. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... referred to as "blacks," or "black-fellows," but they are not really black, their hue being rather a brown, ranging from a very dark brown, indeed, to almost the lightness of a Malay. I found the coast tribes lightest in hue, while the inland natives were very much darker. Here I may mention that after having been on my way south for some months, I began to notice a ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... into the sea or into a large lake, the depth of which is about as great as the ice is thick, the relative lightness of the ice tends to make it float, and it shortly breaks off from the parent mass, forming an iceberg. Where, as is generally the case in those glaciers which enter the ocean, a current sweeps by the place where the berg is formed, ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... their lightness gave way to their gravity; it was as if the long look they exchanged held them together. "It will only depend on yourself—if you'll watch ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... out the recipient of them is evident from the remonstrances he drew upon himself. Eve blamed his lightness of character, the facility with which he let himself be tempted, his tendency to waste in travelling the funds he would have done more wisely to employ in reducing his obligations or avoiding them. At such moments ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... her pony to a gait which set him reaching at his bit. She sat her saddle in a fashion which belonged solely to the prairie. The long stirrups and straight limb. The lightness, and that indescribable something which suggests the single personality of ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... muzzle, length of head, lightness of ear, and depth of chest, as the English dog; but the general frame is stronger and more muscular, the hind quarters more prominent, there is evident increase of size and roughness of coat, and there is also some diminution of speed. If it were not for these points, these dogs might occasionally ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Rupert and Cyprian stared, open- mouthed—while over the whole brilliant scene that remarkable silence brooded, like the sultry pause before the breaking of a storm. Triumphant, reckless, panting,—scarcely knowing what she did in her excitement,—Pequita, suddenly running backward, with the lightness of thistle-down flying before the wind, snatched the flag of the country from a super standing by, and dancing forward again, waved it aloft, till with a final abandonment of herself to the humour of the moment, she sprang with a single ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the first time she had seen the lightness leave his eyes. "No. No. I am your moth—I am her husband. There is no step there." He got up and walked over to where his wife was sitting and towered over her. He was a tall man and he looked especially tall at that moment. "Her plain—husband. Extremely plain, as it happens"—he was himself ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... after her,—there was something within that held him silent, staring at the waters of the river, now sparkling like a stream of diamonds in the risen sun, the lightness gone from him and a trembling ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... closed with the "Detroit," and the "Queen Charlotte" with her flagship when she wished. None of Elliott's witnesses before the Court of Inquiry state that he made sail before the middle of the action, but they attribute the failure to get down to the lightness of the wind. They do state that, after the "Lawrence" was disabled, a breeze springing up, sail was made; which indicates that previously it had not been. Again, it is alleged by the testimony in favor of Elliott that much of the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... larger than the intermediate ones, which are filleted. The base moulding is very deep and hollow. These piers support the Early English arches, with dog-tooth ornament large in the interior, small in the exterior. Altogether, these fine arches give a very pleasing impression of lightness and grace, and make us feel "the fascination of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... etude, so called because all the notes of the right hand are on black keys. This is a brilliant study with a very charming ending. Opus 25, No. 9, is the so called "Butterfly Wings" etude, a designation which expresses its general characteristic of lightness and grace, but fails to make allowance for the accent of passion in the rising and descending passage that occurs about the middle and which should be brought out when it is correctly interpreted—which usually ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... reply, but, stooping, lifted her in her strong arms. And the child shrank back no longer, but was carried as if inanimate; her teeth closely set, her eyes shut, chilled through and through, and with the lightness of a little bird that had just fallen from ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... face the Sacrament; this would be turning one's back, as it were, upon the Deity. The elbow may not rest upon the cushion. The head, held erect, but not haughtily, should move upon the atlas gently and suavely, avoiding 'lightness' and undue vivacity. The lips must not smile; but, when occasion calls for it, they may display a saintly joy. The eyebrows must not be raised too high towards the hair-roots; nor should one be elevated while the other is depressed. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... derived from the country of the Pharaohs; while the Grecian columns and pilasters may be the work of a much later period, when the Jews had learned to combine with the massy piles of their more ancient architecture the elegant lightness which distinguished the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... wasn't in any box at all, Harold. She's—folks!" And Harold saw that, in spite of the lightness of her words, there were almost tears in ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... writing you an amusing letter to-day, I think. After all, I wasn't made to live in England, or I should not cough there perpetually; while no sooner do I get to Paris than the cough vanishes—it is all but gone now. The lightness of the air here makes the place tenable—so far, at least. We made many an effort to get an apartment near the Madeleine, but we had to sacrifice sun or money, or breath, in going up to the top of a house, and the sacrifice seemed too great upon consideration, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... an instant's pause, during which Huldah's breast ceased its regular rise and fall; then the clerk laughed sharply and cried with the apparent lightness ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... assuming a lightness, "I fear I gave thee offense one day and thou hast held it against me. Now let me heal that wound and sweeten thy regard for me with this same offending trinket. Wilt thou take it as a peace-offering from my hands and wear it always?" She bent toward him and, with worshiping hands, he put aside ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... to us, in the Pelasgic and Cyclopean remains, sufficient to indicate the massive strength it early acquired in parts of Greece. In the Homeric times, the intercourse with Asia had already given something of lightness to the elder forms. Columns are constantly introduced into the palaces of the chiefs, profuse metallic ornaments decorate the walls; and the Homeric palaces, with their cornices gayly inwrought with blue—their pillars of silver on bases of brass, rising amid vines and fruit-trees,—even ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... She looked charming with her great boa tied about her throat, and sprang into the dog-cart all lightness ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... words he realised that to Perry they would convey an infamous lightness, but at the thought his hysterical humour redoubled in its energy. It was as if he stood outside—afar off—and watched as a god the little tangled eccentricities of earth. And they were little, even though Perry should continue to regard the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and member of the Academy of St. Luke's, except in his title, was the antipodes of Sir Carte Blanche. Sir Carte was all solidity, solemnity, and correctness; Bijou de Millecolonnes all lightness, gaiety, and originality. Sir Carte was ever armed with the Parthenon, Palladio, and St. Peter's; Bijou de Millecolonnes laughed at the ancients, called Palladio and Michel barbarians of the middle ages, and had himself invented an order. Bijou ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the fair young being—she who nightly joins us now, In a robe of airy lightness, and with jewels on her brow, Fair as the most fair ideal dreaming poet e'er inspired, Or as lover, charmed by ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... which was in the centre, lined with green silk, and gold, were two fine young women who appeared to be ladies of fashion, and consequence; they were dressed after the antique, in an attire which, for lightness, and scantiness I never saw equalled, till I saw it surpassed at Paris. They appeared to be clothed only in jewels, and a little muslin, very gracefully disposed, the latter, to borrow a beautiful ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... maids of the Lowlands Vaunt their silks and their Hollands, In the garb of the Highlands Oh give me my dear! Such a figure for grace! For the Loves such a face! And for lightness the pace That the grass shall not stir. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and manners so serious, so solemn and so fervent, he performed these rites, that every idea of jest, or even of lightness, was absent from the mind of all who ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... satisfactory engine with C. E. Hawley, an employee of the Pope Manufacturing Company, makers of the Columbia bicycle. Hawley, searching for a way to construct an engine that would perform in a manner similar to the Atkinson, yet would have the lightness and compactness necessary for a carriage engine, suggested an idea that Charles believed had some merit. This idea, involving the use of what the Duryeas later called a "free piston," was eventually to be incorporated in their ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... regularity of the teeth of the laughing, loud-talking country-women and servant-girls, who with their clean white stockings and with slippers without heel quarters, tripped along the dirty streets, as if they were secured by a charm from the dirt: with a lightness too, which surprised me, who had always considered it as one of the annoyances of sleeping in an Inn, that I had to clatter up stairs in a pair of them. The streets narrow; to my English nose sufficiently offensive, and explaining at first sight the universal use of boots; without ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with the cork out; and this was one of them for our hero who however, be it remarked, was neither self-contained nor sober by nature. When they got back to his rooms, he really hardly knew what to do to give vent to his lightness of heart; and Hardy, though self-contained and sober enough in general, was on this occasion almost as bad as his friend. They rattled on, talked out the thing which came uppermost, whatever the subject might chance ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of the Gothic era, and which is perpetuated to about the middle of the sixteenth century in the fairylike fancies of the Renaissance. The little open-work rose window, pierced above the portal, was, in particular, a masterpiece of lightness and grace; one would have pronounced it ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Eugubine tables, plates of brass with Umbrian and Roman incised characters, are shown. The Palazzo de' Consoli has higher architectural qualities, and is indeed unique among Italian palaces for the combination of massiveness with lightness in a situation of unprecedented boldness. Rising from enormous substructures mortised into the solid hillside, it rears its vast rectangular bulk to a giddy height above the town; airy loggias imposed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... parting of the lips, the feeble movement of a finger, Ivan's eyes suddenly flew wide open, his jaw relaxed and dropped. He was immediately sensible that all the heaviness of the opiate had passed from him; and that his being was possessed by a singular lightness and freedom. Then he perceived that, at his side, in close contact, indeed, with his new self, was his mother: tenderness incarnate, as of old, yet ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... of connected imagery and reflection. The "Rubaiyat" is, on the other hand, a string of quatrains, each of which has all the complete and independent significance of an epigram. Yet there is so little of that lightness which should characterize an epigram that we can scarcely put Omar in the same category with Martial, and it is easy to understand why the author should have been contented to name his book the "Rubaiyat," or Quatrains, leaving it to each individual to make, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... to bend the knee before so brave and true a lady," he said, with assumed lightness to mask his real feeling. "I hope the time may come when I shall be able to prove how gladly I would ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... of the hairdresser next door have had their hopes of me—indeed, there is scarcely a neighbour who is not chagrined at the turn events have taken—and the world would be only too glad of an excuse to call me 'fool.' Pomponnet's wife must be above suspicion. You will remember that a little lightness of conduct which might be forgiven in the employee of the florist would be unseemly in my fiancee. No more conversation with monsieur Tricotrin, Lisette! Some dignity—some coldness in the bow when you pass him. The boulevard will observe ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... half full of water and he baled her as well as he could with his bonnet, then pushed her off! She went up and down like a cork, and he was terrified. He thought when he went in first she would be heavy to row, but he found the lightness of her was the fearful thing. The wind slapped like a big open hand, and the water would scoop out ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the armor the visitors felt much more at ease. The slightly reduced gravitation gave them a sense of lightness and freedom which more than balanced the junglelike oppressiveness of the air. They found themselves guarding against a certain exuberance; perhaps it was the ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... felt his heart deeply moved by all this, and, sooth to say, his natural cheerfulness and lightness of spirit completely abandoned him at the contemplation of the awful anguish which pressed them down. There is nothing which makes such a coward of the heart as the influence of such a scene. He felt that he stood within a circle of misery, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... dusk. It would be like her to undergo such a reaction of feeling, and to express it, not in words, but by taking up their relation as if there had been no break in it. He had once condemned this facility of renewal as a sign of lightness, a result of that continual evasion of serious issues which made the life of Bessy's world a thin crust of custom above a void of thought. But he now saw that, if she was the product of her environment, that constituted ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... well?" she asked, with a careful lightness, a careful carelessness which she hoped was deceiving. "Were you able to put my husband in the way of seeing and hearing everything that could help ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... with excellent marquetry of woods. Mahogany was the dominating timber in English furniture from the accession of George II. almost to the time of the Napoleonic wars; but many cabinets were made in lacquer or in the bright-hued foreign woods which did so much to give lightness and grace to the British style. The glass-fronted cabinet for China or glass was in high favour in the Georgian period, and for pieces of that type, for which massiveness would have been inappropriate, satin and tulip woods, and other timbers with a handsome grain taking ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... amuse people; I know it. You—and everybody—say I am all cleverness and froth—not to be taken seriously. But did it ever occur to you that what you see in me you evoke. Shallowness provokes shallowness, levity, lightness, inconsequence—all are answered by their own echo.... And you and the others think it ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Nash become, that he slept with extraordinary lightness that night and was up at the first hint of day. Sue appeared on the scene just in time to witness the last act of the usual drama of bucking on the part of the roan, before it settled down to the mechanical dog-trot with which it would wear out the ceaseless ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... field best adapted for his peculiar gifts. He was too judicial, too reluctant to put a good face upon a bad cause, not enough of a rhetorician, and not sufficiently alert in changing front, or able to handle topics with the lightness of touch suitable to the peculiar tastes of a parliamentary Committee. Thus, though he invariably commanded respect, he failed to show the talent necessary for the more profitable, if not more exalted lines of professional ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong—it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... to surprise me, and I often found myself insisting that the looseness and grace with which this garment flapped about the colonel's thin legs was only possible in a brand-new coat having all the spring and lightness of youth in its seams. I was always mistaken. I had only to look at the mis-mated buttons and the raveled edge of the lining fringing the tails. ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the gallery of Bronzes: it contains, among other master-pieces, the aerial Mercury of John of Bologna, of which we see such a multiplicity of copies. There is a conceit in perching him upon the bluff cheeks of a little Eolus: but what exquisite lightness in the figure!—how it mounts, how it floats, disdaining the earth! On leaving the gallery, I sauntered about; visited some churches, and then returned home depressed and wearied: and in this melancholy humour I had better close my book, lest ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson |
