"Sportive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... question that if he had properly conceived it he had it in him to master it—he might have found the stage a gold mine, but he would have found, too, that it is a gold mine which cannot be worked in a smiling, sportive, half-contemptuous spirit, but only in the sweat of the brain, and with every mental nerve and sinew strained to its uttermost. He would have known that no ingots are to be got out of this mine, save after sleepless nights, days of gloom and discouragement, and other days, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... settled himself upon a divan near Madame, with all the complacency of a man whose own foresight has saved him a serious trouble, and said after mature deliberation, gazing thoughtfully at the sportive cherubs ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... him and said, "Then I will tell you what seems best to me. First wash and put on tunics, and bid the maids about the house array themselves. Then let the sacred bard with tuneful lyre lead us in sportive dancing, that men may say, hearing us from without, 'It is a wedding,' whether such men be passers-by or neighboring folk; and so broad rumor may not reach the town about the suitors' murder till we are gone to our well-wooded ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... Air, Fire, Water), the Four Temperaments (Phlegmatic, Melancholy, Coleric and Sanguine). Mythological figures, vases ornamented with bas-reliefs of Louis XIV and great men of his reign, fountain groups representing the chief rivers of France, water nymphs, sportive babies, beasts in combat—sculpture massive, graceful, grotesque—all added their individual lure to the dells, the walks and the ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... general," replied Bucky, in irony sportive. "But you really are putting yourself out too much for me. I reckon I'll not trouble you to go so far. By the way, did I understand you to say you had arrested ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... goes on thus, with his Gascon inspirations: and these sportive notions, struck off at a heat, these careless intuitions, these fine new practical axioms of scientific politics, appear to be every whit as good as if they had been sifted through the scientific tables of the Novum Organum. They are, in fact, the identical truth which the ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... fresh, with a lovely breeze, as the two riders rode briskly over the turf of rolling commons, with the feathery boughs of neighbouring woodlands tossed joyously to and fro by the sportive summer wind. The exhilarating exercise and air raised Lionel's spirits, and released his tongue from all trammels; and when a boy is in high spirits, ten to one but he grows a frank egotist, feels the teeming life of his individuality, and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... judging one another before they are finished. A raw boy, with only the undeveloped elements of manhood in him, is denounced as a dunce. A light-hearted, sportive girl, with an incontinent overflow of spirits, is condemned as a hoiden. Neither boy nor girl is half made. There is only the frame-work of the man and woman up, and it does not appear what they are to become. A young man is wild, and judged accordingly. It is not ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... song and sportive speech, And mirthful tales of earlier years, Though deep within the soul of each Lay thoughts too sorrowful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... conspicuous. To the second division belong stories equally well known, many of them impressive: "The Monastery," "Kenilworth," "Quentin Durward," and "Red Gauntlet" among them, but as a whole marking a falling off of power as increasing years and killing cares made what was at first hardly more than a sportive effort, a burden under which a man, at last broken, staggered toward the desired goal. There is no manlier, more gallant spectacle offered in the annals of literature than this of Walter Scott, silent partner in a publishing house and ruined by its failure after he ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... his views pious and charitable, his assiduity almost incredible; and, that since his death, the integrity of his character has been fully vindicated. Being himself a poet, Johnson was peculiarly happy in mentioning how many of the sons of Pembroke were poets; adding, with a smile of sportive triumph, 'Sir, we are a nest of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... appeared quite unruffled by his sportive sarcasm, and she continued to enumerate her ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... till it was covered, when he would either suddenly shake his huge body, so that one after another they rolled off, or he would attempt to rise slowly upon his legs, in doing which, nearly all would slip from off his slanting back, and only two or three succeed in keeping their places. And other sportive tricks, more than it would be worth while for me to recount, did he perform for the amusement of his play-fellows. And beautiful was it to see the carefulness with which he trod and moved, lest any harm might come to those children. ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... more intimate and vital union with all the influences of the universe, a companion to her loneliness, an angel hymning low to her own listening soul. This made her enjoyment of Nature, in its merest trifles, exquisite and profound; this gave to her tenderness of heart all the delicious and sportive variety love borrows from imagination; this lifted her piety above the mere forms of conventional religion, and breathed into her prayers the ecstasy ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gather flowers, Then feast like spirits in their promised bowers, Then plunge and revel in the rolling surf, Then lay our limbs along the tender turf, And, wet and shining from the sportive toil, Anoint our bodies with the fragrant oil, And plait our garlands gathered from the grave, And wear the wreaths that sprung from out the brave. But lo! night comes, the Mooa[371] woos us back, The sound of mats[372] are heard along our track; 30 Anon the torchlight dance shall ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... islands. The greatest caution is requisite in getting to this position; the passage being extremely narrow, and the water shallow: the latter was so beautifully transparent, that each pebble on the yellow sand appeared distinctly visible, and myriads of sportive fish were seen darting in every direction from the clamorous hissing monster that ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... I think, the result of that active but melancholy Fancy, which can travel far into views of Life and Nature from a slight occasion. It has a mixture of the Sportive which deepens the impression of it's melancholy Close. I could have wish'd, as I have said in a short Note, the Conclusion had been otherwise. The sours of Life less offend my Taste than its sweets delight it. But when I think what NATHANIEL must have felt in passing through Life, I more respect ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... they all did dance! And of the whole sportive company not one footed the measure so neat as little Hattie Tidy, the black man's daughter. "What a shame to enslave a race of such persons," said Mr. Stovepipe. "Yet I went in for the Fugitive Slave Bill, and was one of Marshal Tukey's 'fifteen hundred gentlemen of property and standing.' ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... always in Her sportive mood. The world, indeed, is Her toy. She will have Her own way. It is Her pleasure to take out of the prisonhouse and set free only one or two among a ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the intense desire of license and of revenge. At length that desire was gratified. The Restoration emancipated thousands of minds from a yoke which had become insupportable. The old fight recommenced, but with an animosity altogether new. It was now not a sportive combat, but a war to the death. The Roundhead had no better quarter to expect from those whom he had persecuted than a cruel slavedriver can expect from insurgent slaves still bearing the marks of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... used to go in the afternoon, and sketch from one of the big barges that bring the wine in autumn and the wood in winter down to the sea, or lie in the long grass and make plans pour la gloire, et pour ennuyer les philistins, or wander along the low, sedgy banks, 'matching our reeds in sportive rivalry,' as comrades used in the old Sicilian days; and the land was an ordinary land enough, and bare, too, when one thought of Italy, and how the oleanders were robing the hillsides by Genoa in scarlet, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... intent upon admiration: she seemed to be dancing in the gaiety of her heart; and that was a species of gaiety in which every one sympathized, because it was natural, and of which every one approved, because it was innocent. There was a certain delicacy mixed with her sportive humour, which seemed to govern, without restraining, the tide of her spirits. Her father's eye was following her as she danced to a lively Scotch tune, when Forester pulled Dr. Campbell's cane, on which he was leaning, and exclaimed, "Doctor, I've just thought of an excellent ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... was so gay and sportive that he infected the great company, and it was the most hilarious banquet in the society's history. The old warriors sighed, and wondered at his eternal youth. When he sprang upon the table and sang his old ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... climate convey a sense of safety. Yet even one seasoned to such wonders as these might be startled, for a moment, before his account of the mountain sheep (Ovis montana). This ponderous animal, weighing three hundred and fifty pounds, has a sportive habit of leaping headlong from precipices one hundred feet high, and alighting on its horns, which, being strong and elastic, throw him ten or fifteen feet into the air, "and the next time he alights on his feet all right." (p. 124.) "Mountaineers assert" this; and after this it can be hardly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... dog instantly whistled, and the sportive animal ran to him; but Lady Bassett was a good deal scared, and went in holding her hand to her side. Mary Wells hurried to her assistance, and she cried a little from nervousness when the young woman ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... condition of poverty and dependence (p. 137). Because of this widespread prejudice against their color, "they cannot obtain employment on equal terms with the whites, and wherever they go a sneer is passed upon them, as if this sportive inhumanity were an act of merit.... Thus, though their legal rights are the same as those of the whites, their condition is one of degradation and dependence." In spite of the vigorous agitation for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... itself? and yet for this are none beholden, save to me alone. For it is neither the spear of throughly-begotten Pallas, nor the buckler of cloud-gathering Jove, that multiplies and propagates mankind: but my sportive and tickling recreation that proceeded the old crabbed philosophers, and those who now supply their stead, the mortified monks and friars; as also kings, priests, and popes, nay, the whole tribe of poetic gods, who are at last grown so numerous, as in the camp of heaven (though ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... of the sportive shears Fair Nature misadorning; there were found Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers With spouting urns and budding statues crowned; And horizontal dials on the ground In living box, by cunning artists ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... difficulty in keeping up with them. On through the afternoon they soared along, sometimes swooping low above an alluring bit of scenery and again heading their machines skyward in pure exuberance of spirits. Their troubles at Meadville forgotten, they flew their machines like sportive birds; never had any of them experienced more fully the joy of flight, the sense of freedom that comes from traveling untrammeled into ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... Thalia stooped in sportive mood To Syracusan strains, nor blushed within The woods to house her. When I sought to tell Of battles and of kings, the Cynthian god Plucked at mine ear and warned me: "Tityrus, Beseems a shepherd-wight to feed fat sheep, But ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... retailing their own indecent conduct as the ordinary customs of the country.... The pranks which, in a backwoods American, would be stigmatized as shocking obscenity, become, when perpetrated by a rich Englishman, charming evidence of sportive ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... pleased him, Cintra delighted him; he talked Latin at the convent, fed on oranges, embraced every body, asked news of every body and every thing; "and we find him," says Moore, "in this charming, gay, sportive, schoolboy humor, just at the very moment that 'Childe Harold' is about to reveal to the world his misanthropy, disgust, and insensibility. Lord Byron went from Lisbon to Seville, going seventy miles a day on horseback in the heat of a Spanish July, always delighted, complaining ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... aside to dance and sparkle round great ships, and heave them up; and leaped from off the blades of oars, a shower of diving diamonds; and wantoned with the idle boats, and swiftly passed, in many a sportive chase, through obdurate old iron rings, set deep into the stone-work of the quays; not even it was half so buoyant, and so restless, as their fluttering hearts, when yearning to set foot, once more, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Olympia loved and left of old.[204] 440 Why, thou wert worse than he who broke his vow To that lost damsel, should thou leave me now— Or even that traitor chief—I've seen thee smile, When the clear sky showed Ariadne's Isle, Which I have pointed from these cliffs the while: And thus half sportive—half in fear—I said, Lest Time should raise that doubt to more than dread, Thus Conrad, too, will quit me for the main: And he ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... diabolical pleasure, it is said, in amusing himself with the sufferings of his victims, and in the hour of execution would give utterance to frightful jests, that made them taste more keenly the bitterness of death! He had a sportive vein, if such it could be called, which he freely indulged on every occasion. Many of his sallies were preserved by the soldiery; but they are, for the most part, of a coarse, repulsive character, flowing from a mind familiar with the weak and wicked side ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... nobody else, had robbed good Uncle Reuben; and then they grew sportive, and took his horse, an especially sober nag, and bound the master upon the wild one, for a little change as they told him. For two or three hours they had fine enjoyment chasing him through the fog, and making much sport ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Mantuan lyre I sing of Nature's charms, and touch well pleased A stricter note: now haply must my song Unbend her serious measure, and reveal In lighter strains, how Folly's awkward arts [Endnote Y] Excite impetuous Laughter's gay rebuke; The sportive province ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... in the cradle; two or three of the other little ones, weary with their sportive play, had been laid in their cribs. Henric and Lewis, two lovely boys of five and six years old, having promised to be very good, if allowed to sit up till their father's return, were watching their mother, who was employed in roasting a fine fat quail which their cousin, Lalotte, who had ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... toe, the nymphs Thither assembled, thither every swain; And o'er the dimpled stream a thousand flowers, Pale lilies, roses, violets and pinks, Mix'd with the greens of bouret, mint, and thyme, And trefoil, sprinkled with their sportive arms, Such custom holds along th' irriguous vales, From Wreken's brow to rocky Dolvoryn, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... on the foam-crest waves as they roll in sportive emulation, with a cloudless sky coming down on every side to kiss the horizon, shutting out human vision of all else beyond, one could not fail to be impressed with the greatness, the omnipotence of the Creator. This being but a speck of that vast whole, comprising the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits, Among the woods and copses lose themselves, Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb The wild green landscape. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees, With some uncertain notice, as might seem, Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... always have a manly support of some kind near at hand. Still less had she become a typical belle, and the aggressive society girl who captures and amuses herself with her male admirers with the grace and sang froid of a sportive kitten that carefully keeps a hapless mouse within reach of her velvet paw. The pale and saint-like image which he had so long enshrined within his heart, and which had been created by her devotion to her mother, also faded utterly away ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... spirits, the Blackfeet believe in, or at least tell stories of, ghosts, which conduct themselves much as in our old-fashioned ghost stories. They haunt people in a rather sportive and irresponsible way. The souls or shadows of respectable persons go to the bleak country called the Sand Hills, where they live in a dull, monotonous kind of Sheol. The shades of the wicked are 'earth-bound' and mischievous, especially ghosts of men slain in battle. ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Jim regarded the sportive youth more attentively, and presently dropped into a vacant seat beside him, buying twenty ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... the rolling seas, Or sank on Nature's flowery lap to rest, Or raised my light wings on the sportive breeze, The conscious earth with joy her god confess'd. While Mirth and Gladness round my footsteps play'd, And bright-haired Hope led on the laughing Hours. As man and beast in holy union stray'd To share the lucid ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... has here written in sportive mood, both malice and worth equally join in praising; but the latter with candour, while the other is ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... in the observances of Class Day, and in twenty years after the period last mentioned, its character had in many particulars changed. Instead of the Latin, an English oration of a somewhat sportive nature had been introduced; the Poem was either serious or comic, at the writer's option; usually, however, the former. After the exercises in the Chapel, the class commonly repaired to Porter's Hall, and there partook of ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... for all the rest of the nation?' WILKES. 'You know, in the last war, the immense booty which Thurot[328] carried off by the complete plunder of seven Scotch isles; he re-embarked with three and six-pence.' Here again Johnson and Wilkes joined in extravagant sportive raillery upon the supposed poverty of Scotland, which Dr. Beattie and I did not think it worth our ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... leave these solemn dumps: Revive thy spirits, thou that before hast been More watchful then the day-proclaiming cock, As sportive as a Kid, as frank and merry As mirth herself. If ought in me may thy content procure, It is thine own, thou mayst thy ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... attracted the child took every day a stronger hold of the youth. Frederick was not always in that sportive humour in which we have seen him repeatedly. At times he would wander about silent and solitary, wrapped in his musical meditations. He would sit up late, busy with his beloved music, and often, after lying down, rise from his bed in the middle ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... times, grinding their teeth at us, especially when we were slaughtering the fish on the bank. We kept watch during the entire night, as on that occasion they were truly vicious. Our dogs, for a change, became quite sportive. One of them, named Negrino, got furious with the ariranhas, and, driven mad by their unmusical noises, actually jumped into the stream to go to their attack. In a moment he had quantities of ariranhas upon him, and was bitten savagely, one ear being nearly torn off. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to go and play there. And of course he's going. And he had better play there," said my sister, shaking her head at me as an encouragement to be extremely light and sportive, "or I'll ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... care was taken by their breeders and teachers in selection, and that the species had wonderfully improved during the last few years. I saw no other pet animals among this community except some very amusing and sportive creatures of the Batrachian species, resembling frogs, but with very intelligent countenances, which the children were fond of, and kept in their private gardens. They appear to have no animals akin ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a youthful playfulness, that led him to this outbreak. I have often noticed that even quiet horses, on a sharp November morning, when their coats are beginning to get the winter roughness, will give little sportive demi-kicks, with slight sudden elevation of the subsequent region of the body, and a sharp short whinny,—by no means intending to put their heels through the dasher, or to address the driver rudely, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... dress, manners, customs, and languages of the throng. It would be impossible to convey an idea of the ceaseless Babel of noise which prevails;—the cries designating certain goods, the bartering going on in shrill voices, the laughter mingled with sportive exclamations, and the frequent disputes which fill the air. But there is no actual quarrelling; the Russian police are too vigilant, too much feared, too summary for that. Open violence is instantly suppressed, and woe ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... poor brother Lippo, by your leave! You need not clap your torches to my face. Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk! What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds, And here you catch me at an alley's end Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar? The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up, Do,—harry out, if you must show your zeal, Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole, And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, {10} 'Weke, weke', that's crept ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... grow up rapidly. And when he was only six years of age, endued with great strength he used to seize and bind to the trees that stood around that asylum, lions and tigers and bears and buffaloes and elephants. And he rode on some animals, and pursued others in sportive mood. The dwellers at Kanwa's asylum thereupon bestowed on him a name. And they said, because he seizes and restrains an animals however strong, let him, be called Sarvadamana (the subduer of all). ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the eminent American judge, Joseph Story, relates of him[236]—"To dumb creatures he was kind and considerate, and indignant at any ill usage of them. His sportive nature showed itself in the nicknames which, in parody of the American fondness of titles, he gave to his horses and dogs, as, 'The Right Honourable Mr ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... it came nearer and nearer, tossed about by the sportive echoes, and now clearly betraying that its origin was, as she had at first divined, the note of the Gothic trumpet. Soon the distant music ceased, and was succeeded by another sound, low and rumbling, as of an earthquake ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... more correct the name Chalcis is than the name Cymindis—do you deem that a light matter? Or about Batieia and Myrina? (Compare Il. 'The hill which men call Batieia and the immortals the tomb of the sportive Myrina.') And there are many other observations of the same kind in Homer and other poets. Now, I think that this is beyond the understanding of you and me; but the names of Scamandrius and Astyanax, ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... effect of love and chance, Formed by their sportive parents' ignorance, Bear from their birth the impressions of a slave; Whom heaven for play-games first, and then for service gave: One then may be displaced, and one may reign, And want ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... thank you, Walter, but my hand is engaged for this set to Ishmael Worth; none but the winner of the first prize for me!" said Claudia gayly, veiling the kindness that prompted her to favor the mortified youth under a sportive assumption of vanity. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... neighbors were farther apart and more friendly; while the young people, happy as a flock of birds in the sunny days of mate-choosing, and freshly blooming as the landscape—around them, were out on the mown field adjacent to the house, whirling in the sportive ring, bounding in the merry dance, chatting in agreeable groups, or chasing one another on flying feet to exact or administer some little forfeit, or whisper ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... sweeter still, through all the day I seem to hear her winsome prattle— I seem to feel her hands at play, As though they gave me sportive battle. ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... melancholy, the clouds of which darkened the brightness of his fancy, and gave a gloomy cast to his whole course of thinking: yet, though grave and awful in his deportment, when he thought it necessary or proper, he frequently indulged himself in pleasantry and sportive sallies. He was prone to superstition, but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to a belief of the marvellous, and the mysterious, his vigorous reason examined the evidence with jealousy. He had a loud voice, and a slow deliberate utterance, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... whether the following may not be weaker and weaker, till willingness ensue, is the point to be tried. I will illustrate what I have said by the simile of a bird new caught. We begin, when boys, with birds; and when grown up, go on to women; and both perhaps, in turn, experience our sportive cruelty. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... yesterday's paper, to annul all apologies he coined as coming from us, and to hold him up to public commiseration as a reptile endowed with no more intellect, no more cultivation, no more Christian principle than animates and adorns the sportive jackass-rabbit of the Sierras. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... introduction of the type being 1804. The genus is remarkable for the number of its species having ornamental foliage, and not less so, perhaps, for the insignificance of their flowers. The species under notice (E. japonicus) in cultivation has proved sportive, which habit has been taken advantage of, whence the numerous forms, including the one I have selected for these remarks. Some of the Spindle Trees do not flower in this climate, and others, which do, produce no seed; these facts are in connection with ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... the flowering limes Had laid her down at ease, Lulled by soft, sportive winds, whose tinkling chimes Summoned the wandering bees To feast, and dance, and hold high carnival Within that vast ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... thee in groves, Where the young deers sportive roam, Than where, counting cattle droves, I must sickly sigh for home. Great the love I bear for her Where the north winds wander free, Sportive, kindly is her air, Pride ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... characteristic movement so effectually dispelled the mystery—it could only be Mrs. Rooth who resorted to such conspicuous secrecies—that, to feel the game up and his interview over, he had no need to see the figure reappear on second thoughts and dodge about in the dusk with a sportive, vexatious vagueness. Evidently Miriam's warning of a few minutes before had been founded: a cab had deposited her anxious mother at the garden door. Mrs. Rooth had entered with precautions; she had approached the house and retreated; she had ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... any one of them; 9, that they would never fight in companies against one, and that they would eschew all tricks and artifices; 10, that they would wear but one sword, unless they had to fight against two or more; 11, that in tourney or other sportive contest they would never use the point of their swords; 12, that being taken prisoner in a tourney, they would be bound, on their faith and honor, to perform in every point the conditions of capture, besides being bound to give up to the victors their ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... this that the Poet's humour is widely diversified in its exhibitions. There is indeed no part of him that acts with greater versatility. It imparts a certain wholesome earnestness to his most sportive moods, making them like the honest and whole-hearted play of childhood, than which human life has nothing that proceeds more in earnest. For who has not found it a property of childhood to be serious in its fun, innocent in its mischief, and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Ferdinand this morning was so gay and light-hearted, that his excessive merriment might almost have been as suspicious as his passing gloom the previous day. Not less tender and fond than before, his sportive fancy indulged in infinite expressions of playful humour and delicate pranks of love. When he first recognised her gathering a nosegay, too, for him, himself unobserved, he stole behind her on tiptoe, and suddenly clasping her delicate waist, and raising her ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... ladyship's tears were gliding down her cheeks. Miss Egerton, greatly amazed at the oddness of this closet scene, turned to Miss Beaufort, who a moment before having caught a glimpse of the distressed countenance of the count, could only bow her head to Sophia's sportive observation. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... delight is like another; we know no distinction." Others said, that delight was the laughter of the mind; for when the mind laughs, the countenance is cheerful, the discourse is jocular, the behaviour sportive, and the whole man is in delight. But some said, "Delight consists in nothing but feasting, and delicate eating and drinking, and in getting intoxicated with generous wine, and then in conversing ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... was of sun and a dance of leafy shadows on the wall of the cave, the which shadows held my attention so that I had no will to look otherwhere; for these were merry shadows that leapt in sportive gambols, that danced and swayed, pleasing me mightily. And as I watched these antic shadows I could hear the pleasant murmur of the little rill without the cave, that bubbled with sweet, soft noises like ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... of interesting reminiscences of his life at Washington, at Rome, and at Versailles with Bismarck. As to Rome, he gave me interesting stories of Pope Pius IX, who, he said, was inclined to be jocose, and even to speak in a sportive way regarding exceedingly serious subjects.[14] As to Cavour, he thought him a greater man even than Bismarck; and this from a man so intimate with the German chancellor was a ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... A sportive contest arose among the maidens, as to the comparative beauty of the Spanish and Moorish forms; but the Mauritanian damsel revealed limbs of voluptuous symmetry that seemed ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... and the garden-plats Were happy-hearted youths and merry girls Toiling and singing. Grandsires too were there, Sitting contented under their own vines And fig-trees, while about them merrily played Their children's children like the sportive lambs That frolicked on the foot-hills. Low of kine, Full-uddered, homeward-wending from the meads, Fell on the ear as soft as Hulder's loor Tuned on the Norse-land mountains. Like a nest Hid in a hawthorn-hedge a cottage stood Embowered with vines ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the jetty, the rapid motion landward of the wavetips producing upon his eye an apparent progress of the pier out to sea. This pier-head was a spot which Christopher enjoyed visiting on such moaning and sighing nights as the present, when the sportive and variegated throng that haunted the pier on autumn days was no longer there, and he seemed alone with ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... honor and wealth upon my friend. The generous sportive boy, who cared naught for gold, actually grew rich, for the Sphinx had granted him the most lucrative office in the county, the people made him their sheriff. He rose step by step to the highest place of ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... to make some witty reply to this sportive reproach, when the Duke de Bouillon announced to the duchess that she must prepare herself to ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Adrian, his visor down, rode slowly into the green space, amidst the cheers of his party. The two Knights, at either end, gravely fronted each other; they made the courtesies with their lances, which, in friendly and sportive encounters, were customary; and, as they thus paused for the signal of encounter, the Italians trembled for the honour of their chief: Montreal's stately height and girth of chest forming a strong contrast, even in armour, to the form of his opponent, which was rather under ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a muse. Her question recurred to her; but it was hardly likely, she felt, that her little companion could enlighten her. Nora was a bright, lively, spirited child, with black eyes and waves of beautiful black hair; neither at rest; sportive energy and enjoyment in every ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a glance of tenderness and admiration into the interior of the precious pouch, readjusted his toilet, rubbed up his boots, dusted his poor half sleeves, all gray with ashes, whistled an air, indulged in a sportive pirouette, looked about to see whether there were not something more in the cell to take, gathered up here and there on the furnace some amulet in glass which might serve to bestow, in the guise of a trinket, on ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... lu'dicrus, sportive, laughable); allude', literally, to play at, to refer to indirectly; delude'; ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... with a new and peculiar fervour of eloquence, such as had never been heard among us before, how manifold, how multiform have been this man's generous vindications of our great Bard! Now broad in humour; now sportive and playful; now sarcastic, scornful, and searching; now calmly philosophic in criticism; now thoughtful and solemn, large of reverent discourse, 'looking before and after,' with all the sweetest by-plays of humanity, with every reconciling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... realizing the peril to which the children had exposed themselves. Without doubt their immunity was due to their very audacity. Apparently the boar had not connected these fearless mites with human beings whom he knew to be vulnerable, but had fancied them sportive elves, against whom his tusks would be powerless. Peggy registered a vow not to let Dorothy out of her sight again while ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... persuasion that Providence is eminently watchful over the helpless, and extends an especial care to those who are not capable of caring for themselves. So used, it breathes the same feeling as "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"—or the more sportive adage, that "the fairies take care of children and tipsy folk." The persuasion itself, in addition to the general religious feeling of mankind, and the scarcely less general love of the marvelous, may be accounted for from our tendency to exaggerate all effects that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... when riding bouyantly upon the waves and weaving a sportive dance, is employed by the poets as an emblem of purity, or as an accessory to the horrors of a storm, by his shrieks and wild piercing cries. In his habits he is the vulture of the ocean, while in grace of motion and beauty of plumage he is one of the most attractive ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... the potato field came my first vision. I was a firm believer in the "wee people," but my visions were not entirely peopled with fairies. The life of the woods was very fascinating to me. I enjoyed the birds and the wild flowers, and the sportive rabbits, of which the woods were full. The bell which closed the labourer's day was always an unwelcome sound ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... own credit in their private accounts between self and conscience, vaguely hoping thereby to bamboozle somebody besides themselves—perhaps the recording angel. So, this morning, he hunted up the other children, as his mother had bidden him, and made a manful—nay, desperate—effort to be sportive at home; but the little fort, within the shelter of whose wooden walls had been their home ever since that melancholy night two years ago, had never seemed to him so dull and lonesome. The hunters and field-laborers, belonging to the station, were all abroad, and the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... of ECHO VERSES, may here be noticed. I have given a specimen of these in a modern French writer, whose sportive pen has thrown out so much wit and humour in his ECHOES.[116] Nothing ought to be contemned which, in the hands of a man of genius, is converted into a medium of his talents. No verses have been considered more contemptible than these, which, with ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the little God of Love, as an emblem, I suppose, that only the love of man is worth embodying, for surely Cytherea's is awake enough. The quiver of Cupid, suspended to a tree, gives sportive grace to the scene which softens the tragedy of a breaking tie. The dogs of Adonis pull upon his hand; he can scarce forbear to burst from the detaining arms of Beauty herself, yet he waits a moment to coax her—to make an unmeaning promise. ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... This sportive sally gave Margaret an opportunity to recover herself, which she did promptly; and never once, from that time until the wedding day of her friend arrived, did she by look or word betray ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... jeweller's daughter's life with her mother, passed in dressing, and learning to be looked at when dressed, "avec un front impassible," it reminded me of —— and her mother. What a heroine she would be for Sand! She has the same fearless softness with Juliet, and a sportive naivete a mixture of bird and kitten, unknown to the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... them struck its beak several times against the beak of the other, as if in play. I wished them joy of their expected progeny, and was the more ready to believe they would have it for this little display of sportive sentimentality. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then what a happiness would it have been could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children. But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child comprehended ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and Queen were banquetting at Westminster, at Whitsuntide, 1317, a masked lady rode into the hall on horseback, and delivered a letter to the King. Imagining it to be some sportive challenge or gay compliment, he ordered that it should be read aloud; but it proved to be a direful lamentation over the state of England, and an appeal to him to rouse himself from his pleasures and attend to the good of his people. The bearer was at once pursued and seized, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... swimming. She, though breathing equably at the nostrils, lay deep. The water shocked at her chin, and curled round the under lip. He had a faint anxiety; and, not so sensible of a weight in the sight of land as she was, he chattered, by snatches, rallied her, encouraged her to continue sportive for this once, letting her feel it was but a once and had its respected limit with him. So it was not out of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a white water-lily I saw that day, With its leaves looking up to the sky, And baring its breast to the sportive play Of the wavelets dancing by. And O for the music the streamlet made, As it floated in ripples along; Round the beautiful blossom it eddied and played With a ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... a long-faced lot. They didn't know how to play at all. They had been brought up in stern repression of frivolities as haunters—no matter how sportive they may have been in life—and in turn they cowed mortals into a servile submission. No doubt they thought of men and women as mere youngsters that must be taught their place, since any living person, however senile, would be thought juvenile compared ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... fairly, it is a necessary prerequisite that we should be completely familiar with all the interlocutors, and understand thoroughly all their minutest relations, and points of common knowledge and common feeling with each other. He who does not, must be perpetually in danger of misinterpreting sportive allusion into serious statement; and the man who was only recalling, by some jocular phrase or half-phrase, to an old companion, some trivial reminiscence of their boyhood or youth, may be represented as expressing, upon some person or incident casually ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... he, quickly, "and how to preserve blueberries, and make biscuit like those you gave us when I came to tea. As to dancing, well—I fear 'I am not shaped for sportive tricks.'" ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... with pain at this thought. To feel how wonderful sportive and melancholy powers are stirring in you, and to know at the same time that those to whom your longing draws you are gaily inaccessible to them, that hurts grievously. But although he stood lonely, shut out, and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... and wandering butterfly, not content with being able to fly at its ease through the air, overcome by the tempting flame of the candle, decided to fly into it; but its sportive impulse was the cause of a sudden fall, for its delicate wings were burnt in the flame. And the hapless butterfly having dropped, all scorched, at the foot of the candlestick, after much lamentation and repentance, dried the tears from its swimming eyes, and raising its face ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... of magic, or spiritualism, the presence and aid of 'spirits' is believed to be necessary, with, perhaps, the exception of the sportive or conjuring class. A spirit helps to cure and helps to kill. The free spirit of the clairvoyant in bondage meets other spirits in its wanderings. Anthropologists, taking it for granted that 'spirits' are a mere 'animistic hypothesis'—their appearances being counterfeited by ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... you had assembled all the eyes of the beautiful girls in the kingdom, and combined them, like a peacock's plumage, into the form of a comet—that is, a globe, and a bearded tail to it, diminishing gradually to a point. This beautiful constellation seemed very sportive and delightful. It was much in the form of a tadpole! and, without ceasing, went, full of playful giddiness, up and down, all over the heaven on the concave surface of the nutshell. One time it would be at that part of the heavens under my feet, and in ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... again at the tip, resembling the spout of a china teapot. The under surface of the straight portion of the base is padded with a thick, naked, corneous skin; and, when the animal performs the curious sportive antics in which it occasionally indulges, it gives rapid loud-sounding blows on the ground with this part of the tail. The peculiar form of the tail also makes it a capital support, enabling the vizcacha to sit ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... of fairy superstition in England we may remark that it was of a more playful and gentle, less wild and necromantic character, than that received among the sister people. The amusements of the southern fairies were light and sportive; their resentments were satisfied with pinching or scratching the objects of their displeasure; their peculiar sense of cleanliness rewarded the housewives with the silver token in the shoe; their ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... dipping lightly in the water as if to kiss their reflected images; and, rising suddenly in long rapid flights, mount in circles up high above the tranquil world into the azure sky, till small white specks alone are visible in the distance. Up, up they rise on sportive wing, till the straining eye can no longer distinguish them, and they are gone! Ducks, too, whir past in rapid flight, steering wide of the boats, and again bending in long graceful curves into their course. The sweet, plaintive cry of the whip-poor-will rings ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... I need abbreviate this blissful moment, I saw the enraged animal disappearing in the side-door of the barn; and it was a nice, comfortable Durham cow, that somewhat rare but possible thing—a sportive cow. ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Thou little, sportive boy, This blooming age of thine Is like to-day, so full of joy; And is the day, indeed, That must the sabbath ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... asked Sally, eagerly. He had never said anything before about her clothes. She was suddenly sportive with ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... full of vigour and vivacity, accompanied me. I saw several others, of different ages, who were walking there. But what surprised me was to see a great many of them amusing themselves by various agreeable and sportive games with young girls elegantly dressed, listening to their songs, and joining in their dances. The monk, who accompanied me, listened with great civility and kindness to the questions I put to him concerning his order. The following ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Looks cheerful, when one carries in one's heart The unalienable treasure. 'Tis a game, Which, having once reviewed, I turn more joyous Back to my deeper and appropriate bliss. [Breaking off, and in a sportive tone. In this short time that I've been present here. What new unheard-of things have I not seen; And yet they all must give place to the wond Which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sits, and forms the banquet scene, In regal splendour on the crowded green; And as around he greets his valiant bands, Showers golden presents from his bounteous hands;[28] Voluptuous damsels trill the sportive lay, Whose sparkling glances beam celestial day; Fill'd with delight the heroes closer join, And quaff till ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... centre of a crowd of interested people, chiefly bearded men, who paid him sportive homage, and pretty women, as he illustrated, by means of a wineglass, two knives, and a saltspoon, his new invention for having one's boots fastened by electricity, which was to do for Marconigrams, expose radium as a foolish fraud, ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... excursion on the water was planned for the morning, and Edward and Fanny were wakened from their slumbers by the tones of the bugle; a soft Irish melody being breathed by Spillan, followed by a more sportive one from the other ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... gymnastics, military drill, and formal exercises of the limbs are better than nothing, they can never serve in place of the plays prompted by nature. He maintained that "for girls as well as boys the sportive activities to which the instincts impel are essential to bodily welfare." This principle is now being carried into practice not only for school-children, but for operatives in factories, clerks, and other young persons whose occupations ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... and "established," Mr. Sander noted one presently of which the flower-stalk was yellow instead of brown, as is usual. Sharp eyes are a valuable item of the orchid-grower's stock-in-trade, for the smallest peculiarity among such "sportive" objects should not be neglected. Carefully he put the yellow stalk aside—the only one among thousands, one might say myriads, since C. insigne is one of our oldest and commonest orchids, and it never showed this phenomenon before. In due course the flower opened, and proved ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... Buonamico began the work, and had already completed the greater part of it, when a very curious circumstance occurred; and this, according to Franco Sacchetti, who relates it among his Three Hundred Stories, was as follows. The bishop had a large ape, of extraordinary cunning, the most sportive and mischievous creature in the world. This animal sometimes stood on the scaffold, watching Buonamico at his work, and giving a grave attention to every action: with his eyes constantly fixed on the painter, he observed him mingle his colors, handle the various flasks and tools, beat ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... social classification of the nether world—a subject which so eminently adapts itself to the sportive and gracefully picturesque mode of treatment—it will be convenient to distinguish broadly, and with reference to males alone, the two great sections of those who do, and those who do not, wear collars. Each of these orders would, it is obvious, offer much scope to an analyst delighting in subtle ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... trace A Nymph, or Naiad, or a Grace, Of finer form, or lovelier face! What though the sun, with ardent frown, Had slightly tinged her cheek with brown, The sportive toil, which, short and light Had dyed her glowing hue so bright, Served too in hastier swell to show Short glimpses of a breast of snow; What though no rule of courtly grace To measured mood had train'd her pace,— A foot more light, a step more true, ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... could be. Phene, undeveloped in mind and heart, the easily duped agent of a cruel trick, appeals to us by her slow, incredulous, but eager response to goodness and aspiration, the tremulous opening of her soul to love. But Pippa, with her observant love of nature, her gay, sportive, winsome fancies, her imaginative sympathy with the lives of others, her knowledge of good and evil, her poise, her bright steadiness of soul, carries us into a different and much more highly evolved world of thought ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the key note to the old Negro's character and temperament. He was making a sort of privileged game with a sportive twist out of his ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... annoy, And spoil the promise of our future joy. Oh then approach, ye favour'd of the loves! Come and dwell here ye gentle turtle doves! On yonder spreading branches, perch'd on high, With coos repeated greet the lover's sigh! Then sportive sparrows round the roses play, And sing, delighted, from the bending spray! Ye butterflies, arrayed in coats of gold, On beds of roses fluttering revels hold! Here rest, upon the lily's waving stalk, And add new beauty to the evening walk. Then shall the ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... Mr. Evringham, trying to read the report of the stock market, and becoming more impatient each instant with the sportive breeze. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... "She shall be sportive as the fawn That wild with glee across the lawn Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm, Of ...
— O May I Join the Choir Invisible! - and Other Favorite Poems • George Eliot
... lifted his stick from his knee, and she stood there again as blithe and sportive ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... luck had it, the oratory came to a sudden end. A sportive bull-pup, malevolently released by some one in the crowd, danced up to the horse-block, barking joyfully, and made a lightning dive for the spellbinder's legs. The spellbinder dexterously side-stepped; the dog's aim was diverted from that fleshy portion of the thigh which his fancy ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... wonders of the sportive shears, Fair nature mis-adorning, there were found: Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers, With sprouting urns and budding statues crowned; And horizontal dials on the ground, In living box by cunning artists ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Triplet dared not speak to her. Indeed she seemed but half conscious of his presence. He went for nobody with her. How little we know the people we eat and go to church and flirt with! Triplet had imagined this creature an incarnation of gayety, a sportive being, the daughter of smiles, the bride of mirth; needed but a look at her now to see that her heart was a volcano, her bosom a boiling gulf of fiery lava. She walked like some wild creature; she flung her hands up to heaven with a passionate despair, ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... this bread God's grace be poured, Christ's sweet fragrance fill the bowl! Rule my converse, Triune Lord, Sober thought and sportive word, All my ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... active; all her motions were as graceful, and as undulating as the gently-swelling billow. If she moved quickly, she bounded; if slowly, she appeared to glide on effortless through space. She had taken her lessons of grace in the woods, and her gymnasium had been among the sportive billows of the ocean. It is but of little use me describing her face; for everyone supposes that, in these affairs, the author draws at once, as largely as he can, upon his own imagination, and as he dares, upon the credulity of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... says of Siva the destroyer, "one should worship in supreme love him who does kindness to the soul." But then the feature in the world which most impresses the Hindu is the constant change and destruction, and this must find a place in the All-god. Hence the sportive kindly Krishna comes to be declared the destroyer of the worlds.[397] It is as if in some vast Dravidian temple one wandered through two corridors differently ornamented and assigned to the priests of different rites but both leading to the same image. Hence it is not surprising ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... changes which have been wrought there, in such brief space of time, by industry and enterprise. Where then stood mighty and unbroken forests, through which the savage passed on his mission of blood; or stalked the majestic buffaloe, gamboled the sportive deer, or trotted the shaggy bear, are now to [291] be seen productive farms, covered with lowing herds and bleating flocks, and teeming with all the comforts of life.—And where then stood the town of Losantiville with its three ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... o'ershadowing: here cerulean gods Sport in the waves, grim Triton with his shell; Proteus shape-changing; and AEgeon huge,— His mighty arms upon the large broad backs Of whales hard pressing: Doris and her nymphs: Some sportive swimming; on a rocky seat Some their green tresses drying; others borne By fish swift-gliding: nor the same all seem'd, Yet sister-like a close resembling look Each face pervaded. Earth her natives bore, Mankind;—and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... young blade who for thirty years had been the Beau Brummel of George Brotherton's establishment; but a rather weazened little man whose mind illumined a face that still clung to sportive youth, while premature age ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... greatly aided to my own feelings by the alliance with the ancient phantom of the forest mountain in North Germany. The playfulness of the scene is the very evoker of the solemn remembrances that lie hidden below. The half-sportive interlusory revealings of the symbolic tend to the same effect. One part of the effect from the symbolic is dependent upon the great catholic principle of the Idem in alio. The symbol restores the theme, but under new combinations of form or coloring; gives ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then what a happiness would it have been, could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children! But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... could not avoid noting an obvious remark. Sweden appeared to me the country in the world most proper to form the botanist and natural historian; every object seemed to remind me of the creation of things, of the first efforts of sportive nature. When a country arrives at a certain state of perfection, it looks as if it were made so; and curiosity is not excited. Besides, in social life too many objects occur for any to be distinctly observed by the generality of mankind; yet a contemplative man, or poet, in the country—I ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... never visited. Even the guide had not come on with us, but was employed in showing other parties about the fortifications. It was clear that this portion of the building was left desolate, and that the experiment might be safely made. So the sportive rector declared that he would for a short time wear the regimentals which had once contained the ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope
... His Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always seemed to me to be particularly alive to pointed and witty dialogue. The relaxing levities of tragedy have not been touched by any since him—the playful court-bred spirit in which he condescended to the players in Hamlet—the sportive relief which he threw into the darker shades of Richard—disappeared with him. He had his sluggish moods, his torpors—but they were the halting-stones and resting-places of his tragedy-politic savings, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... My sense reviving.] Al tornar della mente, che si chiuse Dinanzi alla pieta de' duo cognati. Berni has made a sportive application of these lines, in his Orl. Inn. l. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... were here, Where the free waters leap, Shouting in sportive joyousness Adown the rocky steep: Where zephyrs crisp and cool The fountains as they play, With health upon their wings of light, And gladness on their way. Oh, would that she were here, With these balm-breathing trees, The sylvan daughters ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Sin makes a man at variance with himself, with his neighbors, with his nearest connections, and with the whole constitution of the universe. He becomes restless as the ocean, impelled by every contrary wind, and tost about by every sportive billow. The desire of happiness exists, but he is ignorant how to obtain it, and pursues those means which only plunge him into greater misery. To this cause may be attributed all the mental distresses and all the bodily afflictions of individuals—the disturbances which ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... and, being for the most part hatched in the spring, they are now in full vigour. It is a very amusing sight in some of our rural rambles, in a bright evening after a drizzling summer shower, to see the air filled throughout all its space with sportive organized creatures, the leaf, the branch, the bark of the tree, every mossy bank, the bare earth, the pool, the ditch, all teeming with animal life; and the mind that is ever framed for contemplation, must awaken now in viewing such a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... wrinkled front; And now,—instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,— He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I,—that am not shap'd for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... then, it seems to me that the grotesque is, in almost all cases, composed of two elements, one ludicrous, the other fearful; that, as one or other of these elements prevails, the grotesque falls into two branches, sportive grotesque and terrible grotesque; but that we cannot legitimately consider it under these two aspects, because there are hardly any examples which do not in some degree combine both elements; there are ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... many other plants, some varieties, both old and new, are far more constant in character than others. Colonel Le Couteur was forced to reject some of his new sub-varieties, which he suspected had been produced from a cross, as incorrigibly sportive. On the other hand Major Hallett (9/35. 'Gardener's Chronicle' November 1868 page 1199.) has shown how wonderfully constant some varieties are, although not ancient ones, and although cultivated in various countries. With respect to ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... opened on a quiet piazza, shaded by fruit-trees in blossom, and overlooking a small artificial lake stocked with pretty, sportive fish. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... waters are usually as still as those of a lake. For days and weeks together, they reflect each separate tree-top of the pine-forests which clothe the mountain sides, the mirror being broken only by the leap of some sportive fish, or the oars of the boatman as he goes to inspect the sea-fowl from islet to islet of the fiord, or carries out his nets or his rod to catch the sea-trout or char, or cod, or herrings, which abound, in their seasons, ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... "'In flowery meads the sportive Sirens play, Touch the soft lyre, and tune the vocal lay; Me, me alone, with fetters firmly bound, The gods allow to hear the dangerous sound. Hear and obey; if freedom I demand, Be every fetter strain'd, be ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... mortals, alas! there be And mine is that self-same destiny; The fate of the lorn and lonely; For e'en in my childhood's early day, The comrades I sought would turn away; And of all the band, from the sportive play Was I thrust ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... as if they might be in a devotional posture of body. They talked as if they really believed that this might be so. I do not know how this impression has come about; but I have heard this before, and guess that some mischievous or sportive person tried to make some one else believe that cattle and sheep kneel only on New Year's night, when the truth is that they kneel whenever they lie down to rest. I have often thought it a pity that people are so ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... homes, 20 Twins had they been in pleasure; after strife And petty quarrels, had grown fond again; Each other's advocate, each other's stay; And, in their happiest moments, not content, If more divided than a sportive pair [1] 25 Of sea-fowl, conscious both that they are hovering Within the eddy of a common blast, Or hidden only by the concave depth Of neighbouring billows ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... ennobled man, but not made him happier. The Christian is not so happy as the old Greek. The old Greek mythology is full of images of joy, of lightness, and vivacity; nymphs and fauns, dryads and hamadryads, and all sportive creations. The arts that grow up out of Christianity ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... e'er my fingers touched the lyre, In satire fierce, in pleasure gay, Shall not my Thralia's smiles inspire, Shall Sam refuse the sportive lay? ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... were his favorites, so he performed "Du bist die Ruh," "My loved one, I am prison'd" "Ich grolle nicht," "Die alten boesen Lieder," "I lay my all, love, at thy feet," "Aus meiren grossen Schmerzen mach' ich die kleinen Lieder"—all with the same calm superiority, and that light, half-sportive accompaniment. The only thing that gave him a little trouble was that fatal point, "Ich legt' auch meine Liebe, Und meinen Schmerz hinein;" but even ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland |
