"Zest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are delicate, and require constant care and supervision; but that only adds a keener zest to the attractive task of breeding them, the more so owing to the fact that as mothers they do not shine, being very difficult to manage, and generally manifesting a strong dislike to rearing their ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... complete good-humour, I proposed he should introduce me to the French officers, henceforth to become my fellow-passengers. There were two of them, it appeared, and my heart beat as I approached the door. The specimen of Perfidious Albion whom I had just been studying gave me the stronger zest for my fellow-countrymen. I could have embraced them; I could have wept on their necks. And all the time I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... account of which surely is, that the author himself partook largely of the haughty and vindictive republican spirit which he has assigned to the character, and consequently, though perhaps unconsciously, drew the portrait with a peculiar zest. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of blood-money never can be settled. Moreover, the inflicted punishment seldom falls on the party immediately concerned; added to which, in wars of tribes, everybody helps himself to his enemy's cattle in the best way he can, and men formerly poor now suddenly become rich, which gives a zest to the extension of the contest nothing else could produce. Indeed, the poorer orders of Somali are only too glad to have a good pretext for a fight, as a means of bettering their condition, by adding ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... or two men shifted their attitude from one side to the other, and all waited as children do for an absorbing story. A momentary look of satisfaction came over the face of the evangelist, and he began again with zest. ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... what we call tea. Throwing the windows up, so as to enjoy the scenery and freshness of the garden; sitting upon one chair, and resting a leg upon the other; alternately pouring out my coffee, and reading a pocket-edition of Thomson's Seasons, I enjoyed one of those moments which give a zest to life; I felt happy, and in peace and in ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... hostelrie, especially when one arrives, as I did, upon a keen winter's night, with an appetite as sharp, and something of that sense of adventure and excitement which, before the days of down-trains and tickets, always in a greater or less degree, gave a zest to traveling. Greeted with that warmest of welcomes for which inns, alas! are celebrated, I had soon satisfied the importunities of a keen appetite; and having for some hours taken mine ease in a comfortable parlor before a blazing fire, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... pleasure, luxury, and extravagance; the town life at Dublin is formed on the model of that of London. Every night in the winter there is a ball or a party, where the polite circle meet, not to enjoy but to sweat each other; a great crowd crammed into twenty feet square gives a zest to the agrements of small talk and whist. There are four or five houses large enough to receive a company commodiously, but the rest are so small as to make parties detestable. There is however an agreeable society in ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... come to perceive that the one thing which gives value to any piece of art, whether it be book, or picture, or music, is that subtle and evasive thing which is called personality. No amount of labor, of zest, even of accomplishment, can make up for the absence of this quality. It must be an almost instinctive thing, I believe. Of course, the mere presence of personality in a work of art is not sufficient, because the personality revealed ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... an unforgettable man. To describe him in a word, he was Falstag REDIVIVUS. In bulk and stature, in age, in wit and humour, and morality, he was Falstaff. He knew it and gloried in it. He would complain with zest of 'larding the lean earth' as he walked along. He was as partial to whisky as his prototype to sack. He would exhaust a Johnsonian vocabulary in describing his ailments; and would appeal pathetically to Miss Bird, as though at his last gasp, for 'just ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... owners of mines and plantations allow their laborers to suspend their work three times a day for the chacchar, which usually occupies upwards of a quarter of an hour; and after that they smoke a paper cigar, which they allege crowns the zest of the coca mastication. He who indulges for a time in the use of coca finds it difficult, indeed almost impossible, to relinquish it. This fact I saw exemplified in the cases of several persons of high respectability in Lima, who are in the habit of retiring daily to a private apartment for the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... mysteries; if he is lightly said to be Early Victorian, it is not because he was typical of his age, but because he contributed so much to make it what it was. While Browning lived an eager personal life, full of observation, zest, and passion, Tennyson abode in more impersonal thoughts. In the dawn of science, when there was a danger of life becoming over-materialised, contented with the first steps of swiftly apprehended knowledge, and with solutions which were no solutions at all, but only the perception of laws, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... That smiling young person working away on the floor in front of the table is a West Coast Brahman, sent on a stipend from the Hindu state of Travancore. It is her first experience away from home and the zest and adventure of the new life ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... were blistered, his throat dry as a kiln. Throwing off his hat, he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and cursed the marsh as if it were a living thing, cursed it with a slow, unctuous zest, spat out upon it the venom and wrath that had accumulated ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the local favourite sport was renewed with zest and eagerness, and almost everywhere foot-races were run, the prize of the conqueror being a tansy-cake. Stoolball and barley-brake were also favourite games in this month, as Poor Robin says in his Almanack for 1677. Barley-brake seems to have been a very merry game, in which the ladies ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... will be equally useful to grownups. The author has seen staid, respectable people play "Lubin Loo" with as much zest and spirit as the youngest group of children. All of us have played "Going to Jerusalem." The spirit must be there; there is nothing so contagious as the spirit ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... The Colonel's manner had been so affable, his appreciation of Looe and its scenery and objects of interest so whole-hearted, he had played his part in the day's entertainment with so unmistakable a zest! ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... defied. It produces result. You are here. Do I dare to lose caste? Yes. Do I dare to be your mistress—your concubine—your slave—your chattel? Joyfully. Gwynplaine, I am woman. Woman is clay longing to become mire. I want to despise myself. That lends a zest to pride. The alloy of greatness is baseness. They combine in perfection. Despise me, you who are despised. Nothing can be better. Degradation on degradation. What joy! I pluck the double blossom of ignominy. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... into immediate contact with all the ideas which it contained. They are now therefore familiar to him; and he is perfectly prepared for the second, and for every succeeding question formed upon it; and he fashions the answers with readiness and zest. Every such answer is a kind of triumph to the child, which he gives with ease and pleasure, and yet every one of them, as an exercise of the mind, is equally beneficial as the first. When the teacher therefore asks, "What did Jesus do?" and afterwards, "For whom ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... what the people wanted. Again, and again, and yet again the crowd exhausted its pent-up emotions in frantic cheers. The clouds of gloom were rolled back, the sun was shining bright again, and with fresh zest the people turned to the enjoyment of ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... in my profession, and the future was full of interest. I would not have changed places with any man on earth. Now!" he held out his right hand and snapped his fingers expressively, "it is over; the zest is out of it all if you are not there. If I had met you anywhere else it might have been easier, but you have come right into the middle of my life, and if I would I shall not be able to forget you. Every morning when I come down to breakfast I shall look across the table ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... glory to be called sons." A ride around the town followed, without ceremony, and in the evening a state dinner and ball were given. The attendance at the latter was very large and the Prince delighted everyone, and particularly the ladies, by dancing with evident zest and pleasure until three o'clock in the morning. During the day thus commenced he left the Island amid every evidence of popularity and loyalty—after accepting a handsome Newfoundland dog as a present from the people and presenting Lady Bannerman ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... I was the victim of a singular hallucination. I flattered myself on being the one individual in the world not summoned to play his part in the comedy of Life. I sat alone in the great auditorium like the mad king of Bavaria, watching with little zest what seemed but a sorry spectacle. I thought myself secure in my solitary stall. But I had not counted on the high gods who crowd shadowy into the silent seats and are jealous of a mortal in their midst. Without warning was I wrested from my place, hurled onto ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Robert Ford's Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories, we have not yet made its acquaintance. The title is descriptive, as few titles are, of the unusual range of the book, which, be it said, will probably be read with as much zest by 'big ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... we returned below to our prepared dinners, at which our reverend orator asked a blessing, with more fervor than is commonly observed in our Cossack clergymen; and we fell to, with a zest and hilarity rarely to be found among a large collection of prisoners. If, like the captive Jews on the Euphrates, we had hung our harps upon the willows of the Medway, we took them down on this joyous occasion. We felt the spirit of freedom glow within us; and ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... men who are pure are those who are absorbed in some pursuit, or possessed by a great love; be it the love of clean, wholesome life which is religion, or the love of a noble man which is hero-worship, or the love of a true woman. These are the four powers which are stronger than "the flesh"—the zest of a quest, religion, hero-worship, and the love of a good woman. If a man is not possessed by one of these he will ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... especially to the descendants of the Pilgrims who, in 1620, laid on New England shores the foundations of that civil and religious freedom upon which has been built a refuge for the oppressed of every land, the story of the Pilgrim "Exodus" has an ever-increasing value and zest. The little we know of the inception, development, and vicissitudes of their bold scheme of colonization in the American wilderness only serves to sharpen ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... slip," she repeated with great zest. "All men do. And I'm glad you slipped, for it proved you human. I was getting quite overawed by the terrible precision with which you did exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. It made me feel so very small and inferior, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... went down to breakfast in a room like a smoky tunnel where the lights burned sickly. She was in a murky and suffocating humor, but Sir Joseph was strangely content for the hour and the air. He ate with the zest of a boy on a holi-morn, and beckoned her into his study, where he ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... marked consideration, and afterwards killed and eaten. "The skull, jaw-bones, and ears are then suspended on a tree, as an antidote against evil spirits; but the flesh is eaten and much relished, for they believe that all who partake of it acquire a zest for the chase, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... learning and zest in this 'longest and sorest chase' (as King James called his hunt on the morning of the fatal August 5) I am under the deepest obligations. The allurements of a romantic conclusion have never tempted him to leave the ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... that could stretch the meaning of the word "dissemble" so as to make it cover so violent a process as kicking downstairs has the true zest, the tang, of contradiction and surprise. Hood, not content with such a play upon ideas, would bewitch the whole sentence with plays upon words also. His fancy has the enchantment of Huon's horn, and sets the gravest ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... smirks and civility, he and Leach quite fondling one another. Dined yesterday with Stanley, who gave me a commission to bet a hundred for him on Bentley against Berbastes for the Derby, and talked of racing after dinner with as much zest as if he was on the turf. Who (to see him and hear him thus) would take him for the greatest orator and statesman ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... the diamonds of Golconda; its wings were of the color of the deep blue skies of Damascus, sprinkled with glittering stars; its motions were swift and graceful beyond all others, and it seemed to revel in the bliss of the dewy roses and honeysuckles, with a zest which made Adakar only repine the more, that he had lost the capacity of enjoyment by abusing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... relished acquiring the most effective means of mastery in all practical affairs. His very exercise books, used at school, gave proof of it." As he did these things with care and industry, so he followed with zest the spirited diversions of the hunt and the life in fields and forests. Very early he put his knowledge of the surveyor's art to practical test, and applied the chain and logarithm to the reaches of the ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... to lunch, a plentiful but not luxurious repast. There was no lack of lively repartees and anecdotes, and we had speeches and songs afterward. I wonder if I ever heard "'Tis better to laugh than be sighing" given with more zest than on that day? One could easily imagine that it was such an occasion as this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... say that the spaghetti was merely the central dish, around which revolved and was devoured every delicacy that Florence had ever heard of in his Italian itinerary, the whole washed down with strange wines from the same sunny land. Florence's fondness for this sort of thing gave zest to a story Field told of his friend's experience in London, in the summer of 1890. The epicurean actor had made an excursion up the Thames with a select party of English clubmen. Two days later Florence was still abed at Morley's, and, as he said, contemplated ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Adoration, from the down Of damsons to the anana's crown, God sends to tempt the taste; And while the luscious zest invites The sense, that in the scene delights, Commands ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... point, the old gentleman is understood to be bawling something from the back. By the utter morosity of Algy's face—faintly seen in the distance—I conjecture that it is a joke; and, by the chuckling agony of zest with which the old man is delivered of it, I further conclude that it is something slightly unclean, but, thanks to the wind, none of us overtake a word of it. The wind's spirits are rising. Its play is becoming ever more and more boisterous. It would be difficult to imagine any thing disagreeabler ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... consolation and made going easier that they were to drive over the famous Cornice Road as far as San Remo, instead of going to Genoa by rail as most travellers now-a-days do. They departed from the Pension Suisse early on an exquisite morning, fair and balmy as June, but with a little zest and sparkle of coolness in the air which made it additionally delightful. The Mediterranean was of the deepest violet-blue; a sort of bloom of color seemed to lie upon it. The sky was like an arch of turquoise; every cape and headland shone jewel-like in the golden sunshine. ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... mind was fundamentally sane and well-balanced, and that he only regarded "fiendmongering" as a pleasantly thrilling diversion. His Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne (1811) were probably written with the same zest and spirit as his harrowing letter to "impious Fergus." They are the outcome of a boyish ambition to practise the art of freezing the blood, and their composition was a source of pride and delight to their author. A letter to Peacock ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... OPTIC is sufficient warrant of the absorbing style of narrative. This series is as bright and entertaining as any work that Mr. ADAMS has yet put forth, and will be as eagerly perused as any that has borne his name. It would not be fair to the prospective reader to deprive him of the zest which comes from the unexpected by entering into a synopsis of the story. A word, however, should be said in regard to the beauty and appropriateness of the binding, which makes it a most ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... I think the zest of the game was palling on us a little, strange as it may seem. We could dig gold from the soil almost at will. It would seem that this single fact would keep normally acquisitive men keyed to a high pitch of endeavour all the time; but it was not so. I suppose we needed a vacation. We began ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... made of fine network, and also slung on a single pole and borne by two men. With cushions arranged in them I can fancy no more luxurious conveyance for an invalid, though for my part, as I think exertion gives zest to travelling, I should prefer being bumped on the back of a mule, or employing my own legs. As Dr Cuff was anxious to return on board to look after his charges, we had not ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... a right to his claim of a discerning eye. There was something that set him apart from the other young men who had come with Professor Thorpe to Storm, aside from his English-cut clothes and a certain ease and finish which they lacked. It was an effect of keenness, of aliveness to the zest of the passing moment. He spoke of himself sometimes as a collector of impressions; and it was a true characterization. His slight, casual glance invariably took in more than the stare of other people; his ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... of Scotch humour were much less refined, and its utterances at that early period could be scarcely more than the jests and unwritten ballads of the populace, yet his early acquaintance with them must have lingered in the young Prince's mind, acquiring additional zest from the prepossessions of exile and the longing for home. And when the polished singer of the King's "Quhair" found himself again in his native land he seems to have burst forth with the most genuine impulse into the broad fun, rustical and natural and racy of the soil, which perhaps ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... love keep little company together nowadays; the more the pity, that some honest neighbours will not make them friends," would give to those acquaintances who were in Shakespeare's confidence an added zest and interest in such plays quite lacking to the uninitiated, or ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... to the cat, which had been presented to them when a kitten by the mate's wife, acted upon the advice with so much zest that for the next two days the indignant animal was like to have been killed with kindness. On the third day, however, the parrot's cage being on the cabin table, the cat stole furtively down, and, at the pressing request of the occupant itself, ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... saved the position. "Don't you tell them, you know—only me! You whisper it in my ear.... Yes—quite close up, like that." Dolly entered into this with zest, the possession of a secret in common with this new and ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... children, go on walks, and brood over the past. She would have been quite happy like that forty years ago. The young have high spirits, and can amuse themselves without work. She never wanted work when she was eighteen. It's the old who need work. They've lost their spring and their zest for life, and need something to hold on to. It's all wrong, the way we arrange it—making the young work and the old sit idle. It should be the other way about. Girls and boys don't get bored with perpetual holidays; they live each moment of them hard; they would welcome the ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... McPherson's comment upon the articles which appeared in the Spy and the Gazette, and the Springfield Republican, and her opinion was pretty generally shared by the citizens of Allington, who immediately raked up the ashes of the Brownes' past history, and recalled with great zest the times when Mrs. Browne had worked in the kitchen at Grey's Park, while poor Mr. Browne was charged with every possible second-class occupation, from mending brass ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... Tibur, never dried, And sloping AEsule, and the hill Of Telegon the parricide. O leave that pomp that can but tire, Those piles, among the clouds at home; Cease for a moment to admire The smoke, the wealth, the noise of Rome! In change e'en luxury finds a zest: The poor man's supper, neat, but spare, With no gay couch to seat the guest, Has smooth'd the rugged brow of care. Now glows the Ethiop maiden's sire; Now Procyon rages all ablaze; The Lion maddens in his ire, As suns bring back the sultry days: The shepherd with his weary sheep ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... known and will be longest remembered; he was the friend of Wordsworth, Southey, and others of his illustrious contemporaries, and is famous for his witty remarks, to which his stammering tongue imparted a special zest; he was never married; his affection for his sister Mary, for whom he composed his "Tales from Shakespeare," is well known, and how in her weakness from insanity he tenderly nursed ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... him. The young bootblack, who was used to nothing better, ate his portion with zest, and glanced askance at Rodney to see how he relished his supper. He was surprised to see that his more aristocratic companion seemed to enjoy it ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... that positive morgue, not to say arrogance, which marks the demeanour of their class in the western parts of France. There are regions in Brittany where the carriage of the peasants towards the 'bourgeois' gives reality and zest to the old story of the ci-devant noble who called a particularly insolent varlet to order in the days of the first Revolution by saying to him: 'Nay, friend, you will be good enough to remember that we are living in a republic, and that I ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... already stated that Belt devoted the scanty leisure of his last years to the study of the glacial period, entering with zest into the consideration of its cause, the method of deposition of its beds, and the time-relationship of man to it—complex questions on which his imagination had full scope, and which, had his life been prolonged, his patient accumulation of evidence might ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... undoubted Celtic element in him underlying what seemed foreign to it, the disregard of conventionality in one phase, and the falling under it in another—the reaction and the retreat from what had attracted and interested him, and then the return upon it, as with added zest because of the retreat. The confessed Hedonist, enjoying life and boasting of it just a little, and yet the Puritan in him, as it were, all the time eyeing himself as from some loophole of retreat, and ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... the whip placed near her hand, and her black woman's bed made within reach on the floor. She then went into a shell of sleep which dancing-parties in the house had not broken, and required no further attention until the birds stirred in the morning. Angelique rushed out to evening freedom with a zest which became rapture when she danced. Perhaps this fresh delight made her the ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... inquiries addressed to the expectant groom, in part by the confidences of the postmaster at the corners concerning the bulk and frequency of the correspondence passing between Theron and the now remote Alice—they had followed the progress of the courtship through the autumn and winter with friendly zest. When he returned from the Conference, to say good-bye and confess the happiness that awaited him, they gave him a "donation"—quite as if he were a married pastor with a home of his own, instead of a shy young bachelor, who received his guests and their contributions ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... interfere with her plans. He went about his work from that day on, however, with a feverish eagerness and zest, and an exaltation that frequently lifted him to a sort of glory that he could neither define nor deny. There were moments when he slipped far back into the depths, and cursed himself for rejoicing in the sacrifice she was apparently so willing to make. And at such times he found ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... again, the most charming of verses. Smart things fly about; Repartees, and Bon-Mots, With too many secrets that all the world knows: Old Anecdotes came on the tapis, new drest, And season'd with Satire, to give them a zest. But the COUNTESS was shock'd! and declar'd with much feeling, [p 17] "She hated the faults of her neighbour revealing. Detraction, of late, had been full of employment, And truly, some folks knew no other enjoyment. 'Twas said, ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... Mountstuart's party, and had already excused himself, intending to keep Crossjay to the grindstone. Willoughby was for the boy, as usual, and more sparklingly than usual. Clara looked at him in some surprise. He rallied Vernon with great zest, quite silencing him when he said: "I bear witness that the fellow was here at his regular hour for lessons, and were you?" He laid his hand on Crossjay, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the termination of Denisov's furlough after Christmas to return with him to their regiment. His approaching departure did not prevent his amusing himself, but rather gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the greater part of his time away from home, at ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... pastor's niece, complimented me, but I was still better pleased to see her cousin Helen. The theologian of twenty-two was fair and pleasant to the eyes, but she had not that 'je ne sais quoi', that shade of bitter-sweet, which adds zest to hope as well as pleasure. However, the evident friendship between Hedvig and Helen gave me good hopes of success ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... habit—not the zest—of life recovered its vital power. This is a common enough fact. I have known people, inwardly intensely sad, without a grain of cheerfulness in their souls, yet keep up an appearance of cheerfulness because ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Will to my bent, I'd have afar ones near me still, And music of rare ravishment, In strains that move the toes and heels! And when the sweethearts sat for rest The unbetrothed should foot with zest ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... with a new-fangled feast; she pursues the zest of an unknown flavour, raging to load all the tables with dishes yet ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... checked by the association of ideas which has led me to regard versification as a defect. Our studies of history and of the natural sciences were not carried far, but, on the other hand, we went deep into mathematics, to which I applied myself with the utmost zest, these abstract combinations exercising a wonderful fascination over me. Our professor, the good Abbe Duchesne, was particularly attentive in his lessons to me and to my close friend and fellow-student Guyomar, who displayed a great aptitude for this branch of study. We always returned together ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... each other on terms of perfect social courtesy in the drawing-rooms of society; and future presidential candidates, cabinet members, senators, congressmen, jurists, orators, and battle heroes lent the little social reunions of Springfield a zest and exaltation never found—perhaps impossible—amid the heavy, oppressive surroundings of conventional ceremony, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... the zest of a group of sportsmen, who had pitched their camp in this sequestered wilderness, suffered an abatement on the discovery of the repute of the region and the possibility of being summoned to serve on a sheriff's posse in the discharge of ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... bad men are strangers to good feelings, or deficient of sensibility. Only the good feeling does not last—nay, the tears are a kind of debauch of sentiment, as old libertines are said to find that the tears and grief of their victims add a zest to their pleasure. But Mrs. Lambert knew little of what was passing in this man's mind (how should she?), and so prayed for him with the fond persistence of woman. He was much better—yes, much better than he was supposed ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had just bobbed into the net and the spider, with hideous, carnivorous zest, was scrambling for it, when the guardian of the manor returned with the family solicitor, a little man who bore in his arms a bundle of papers which, after the customary greetings, he spread upon the table. He helped himself to a glass of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... probabilities, a duplicity so audacious that it passed for a kind of sincerity, which gave her successes the appearance of being due to an almost supernatural good luck. Histrionics were her stock-in-trade: she was eternally playing a part, and playing it with such zest that she habitually cheated her neighbours, and occasionally, for the time being, even herself, into forgetting that her role was merely assumed for ulterior purposes. When a crisis was reached where there was no further use for play-acting, she was ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... unflinchingly. In gathering the healing herbs and in administering them, song brought the required efficacy. When he planted, he sang, in order that the seed might fructify and the harvest follow. In his sports, in his games, when he wooed and when he mourned, song alike gave zest to pleasure and brought solace to his suffering. In fact, the Indian sang in every experience of life from ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... Though it may seem surprising, in view of his former indolence, it is true that he gave himself to his work with great industry. At the same time, however, he continued to read stories of adventure and history and other similar works with as much zest as ever, and entered into an agreement with a friend whereby each was to entertain the other with original romances. The monotony of office duties was also relieved by many trips about the country, in which the keenest delight was felt in natural ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... sat down before to a regular dinner, and they told Sidonia 50. Their confession added a zest to the repast. He gave them occasional instructions, and they listened as if they were receiving directions for a new performance. They were so quick and so tractable, that their progress was rapid; and at the second course Josephine was instructing Michel, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... The death of heroes or the throes of state. From club-room to street-corner runs the cry After the newest fact, or latest lie: The hurrying throng unfolded broad-sheets grasp, And read with goggled eyes and lips a-gasp, Blood! Blood! More Blood! It makes hot lips go pale, But gives the sweetest zest to the unholy tale. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... your nephew, Sir Rowland,—but that wouldn't serve my turn. To be complete, my vengeance must be tardy. Certain of my prey, I can afford to wait for it. Besides, revenge is sweetened by delay; and I indulge too freely in the passion to rob it of any of its zest. I've watched this lad—this Sheppard—from infancy; and, though I have apparently concerned myself little about him, I have never lost sight of my purpose. I have suffered him to be brought up decently—honestly; because I would make his fall the greater, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... on a divan of shawls and cushions, would receive the envoy of the Sultan of Africa bringing presents from his master. It would be just such a play of make-believe as the boy loved. But when La Mothe proposed to present the offering in the name of the King of the Genie her zest waned, and a little alloy seemed mixed with the pure gold of the day. That would remind him of Valmy and spoil all his pleasure, she declared. There must be nothing of Valmy ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... briefly terminated during the night, but renewed, with additional zest, in the morning. The songs and the shouts of the drunken soldiers were heard in the streets of Kezan, and, from the battlements, the Tartars beheld these orgies, equaling the most frantic revels of pagan bacchanals. The Tartar khan, from the top of a bastion, watched the spectacle, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... cried. "Every letter represented except Z." Mrs. Peterkin drew from her pocket a letter from the lady from Philadelphia. "She thought you would call it X-cellent for X, and she tells us," she read, "that if you come with a zest, you will ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... hearing it, but when I arrived at my village "in a hole," and settled down among the Badgers, I heard it on every hand—in cottages, in the streets, in the fields, men, women and children were singing, whistling, and humming it, and in the evening at the inn roaring it out with as much zest as if they had been singing ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... meal a thought struck him which gave little zest to the rest of his food. He had walked silently when he left his post; no one waiting in the room where the tray was could have heard him, he felt sure. Then how did that person know the instant he stepped away? ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... friends drop in at times, But ah! their zest is gone; No organ voice with awe sublimes BROWN, JONES, and ROBINSON. They sound to me quite commonplace, Who seemed a ducal pack: 'Twas he who lent them rank and race— Oh, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... a young hound in the neighborhood. To train him his master used to put him on the trail of one of the Cottontails. It was nearly always Rag that they ran, for the young buck enjoyed the runs as much as they did, the spice of danger in them being just enough for zest. ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... he excelled in all manly exercises. He was a first-rate football- player, and a good all-round cricketer; he was an excellent oar, and a fairly good swimmer; and until the last few months of his life no man could enjoy with more zest a game of quoits, or tennis, or a day devoted to the royal game of golf. In the early days of his manhood, with characteristic unselfishness, he risked his own life on one occasion by leaping from a rock into the sea, on the wild north Irish coast, to bring ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... took over the command of the sixth battery. He felt easier in the more congenial atmosphere of his new department; yet his full zest for a ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... a popularity equal to Mrs. Meade as a Writer of stories for young girls. Her characters are living beings of flesh and blood, not lay figures of conventional type. Into the trials and crosses, and everyday experiences, the reader enters at once with zest and hearty sympathy. While Mrs. Meade always writes with a high moral purpose, her lessons of life, purity and nobility of character are rather inculcated by example ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Pyjamas and take a Tub and ease himself into the Costume made famous by John Drew, the Routine of buying Golden Pheasants and Special Cuvee Vintages for almost-Ladies, preserved by Benzoate of Soda and other Chemical Mysteries, began to lose its Sharp Zest. ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... of sport. The double-barrel gives no "law." At least to those who love the fields, the streams, and woods for their own sake, the single-barrel will fill the bag sufficiently, and will permit them to enjoy something of the zest men knew before the invention of weapons not only of precision but of repetition: inventions that rendered them too absolute masters of the situation. A single-barrel will soon make a sportsman the keenest ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... but also from personal resentments and personal vanity. What was remarkable was that this 'selflessness' had in it no element of 'quietism.' He retained all the keenness of desire for reform, all the zest of intellectual striving, and all the optimism, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... whole theatre was in convulsions of merriment. His Majesty was nearly suffocated by the excess of his delight; and the naive manner of the actress, her wit, archness, and beauty, received additional zest by the extravagance of "the broad-brimmed hat and waist-belt" in which Dryden had attired her, and which fixed her permanently in the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... (helped by HENRI this time) showed a training-stable, and how a favourite can be nobbled. It didn't in the least matter why it was done, or where it was done. It was a lovely sight to see somebody or other giving the wrong horse beans. And the horse liked them, and eat them with a zest, and felt none the worse for them. On the contrary, the beans seemed to give the creature sufficient vigour to carry on the running until Christmas at Drury Lane, with a trot to Covent Garden to follow, and then back again, perhaps to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... to that gingerbread dog And he barks with such terrible zest That the chocolate cat is at once all agog, As her swelling proportions attest. And the chocolate cat goes cavorting around From this leafy limb unto that, And the sugar-plums tumble, of course, to the ground— Hurrah for that ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... beautiful and wild blooded. It is fierce with the excelling animal zest of something young ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... hoping for a decadence of the craze for historical romances so long as the public is fed on books like this? Such a story has zest for the most jaded palate; nay, it can hold the interest even of a book reviewer. From the first page to the last there is not a moment when one's desire to finish the book weakens. Along with the ordinary ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... that it should count for the decencies of high-school life. By senior year the sort of trouble that a Christian boy encounters in school was almost all ended, but it had been more through his dogged resistance to opposition than because of any special zest in ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... his business devotedly, and never in a single instance sacrificed it to his pleasure, his comfort, or his inclinations. When it was finished, he found solace and enjoyment in the society of these ladies, much as he would enjoy his dinner, though in a higher degree, and with a keener zest. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... did not act upon the first impulse communicated to one of his friends, and forthwith retire from public life, he with this incident lost all zest for it. Occasionally he spoke, choosing the level, unattractive field of the Civil Service Estimates. It was a high tribute to his power and capacity that on the few occasions when he spoke the House filled up, not only with the contingent ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the imagination. The very meagreness and minuteness of the physical witnesses to a former condition of things cease to discourage, and actually become an incitement more effective than bulkier relics might impart. The delicacy of suggestion lends a zest to your dream; and the sober streets open out before you into vistas of austere reminiscence. The first night that I passed in Salem, I heard a church-bell ringing loudly, and asked what it was. ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... all that would be lost for long times in the general miraculous variety of things! On the whole, going through Spain in the autumn weather, even with poverty making mouths alongside, was not a sorry business! Zest lived in pitting vigor and wit against mole hills threatening an aggregation into mountains! As for time, what was it, anyhow, to matter so much? He owned ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... undoubtedly was, though so young, of much of the force of character of her family, to put a good face upon things. Her letters to her parents, written during the Carnival, are full of pleasant details of her new life. She was enjoying, with girlish zest, the gaieties around her, and entering fully into the merry prospects of the Court masquerades. Whether her expressions are quite sincere, is, perhaps, immaterial under the circumstances—she knew her father's disposition ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... rollicking young soldier than the quiet, reserved fellow he is. One thing is certain, he has a devotion for his mother, and for that I bless the boy. He considers her first in everything, and she can enter into his learning with a zest and interest ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... educate a woman, who could see no farther than her own kitchen-stove? When you wanted to be a world-saviour, to walk tip-toe on the misty mountain-tops of heroism, she dragged you down and chained you to the commonplace, taking all the zest and fervour out of your soul! The memories of "seam-squirrels" and of thin coffee and ill-smelling and greasy soup had slipped somewhat into the background of Jimmie's mind, and he lived again the sublime hour when he had confronted the court and stood for the fundamental rights of an American citizen. ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... which is partly an imitation of Molire's School for Wives, has borrowed from The School for Husbands, the letter which Isabella writes to Valre (Act ii., Scene 8), and also the scene in which Isabella escapes disguised in her sister's clothes: but, of course, to give an additional zest to the English play, the author makes Pinchwife himself bring his wife to her lover, Horner. The scene hardly bears transcribing. He has also partly imitated in The Gentleman Dancing-Master, first performed in 1673, some scenes of The School ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... plain, the books are exceptionally illustrated—most of them having a hundred or more illustrations which add keen zest to the stories. ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... the government. Fortunately for the country, he failed; and no less fortunately, when, later, the territorial governorship of Oregon was offered to him, Mrs. Lincoln's protest induced him to decline it. Returning to Springfield, he gave himself with renewed zest to his law practice, acquiesced in the Compromise of 1850 with reluctance and a mental reservation, supported in the Presidential campaign of 1852 the Whig candidate in some spiritless speeches, and took but ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... exhibiting that rarest quality of the successful trader, the art of linking one transaction with another), he was sometimes amusingly deficient in what is known as common sense. In later life he used to tell with infinite zest a story of a blunder of earlier years which might easily have led to serious if not fatal results. He had been suffering from nervous exhaustion and had been ordered to take a preparation of nux vomica. The dose was to be taken three times daily: in the morning, at noon, and ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... of collecting the hunt for bargains adds zest to the game, and probably more so in stamps than in any other hobby, not even excepting old china; and, as in other lines of collecting, the bargain hunter must be equipped with the expert knowledge of the specialist if he would sweep into his net at bargain prices the unsuspected ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... grammar and phrase-book of national feeling. A history of our literature must be flexible enough, as I have said elsewhere, to include "the social and economic and geographical background of American life; the zest of the explorer, the humor of the pioneer; the passion of old political battles; the yearning after spiritual truth and social readjustment; the baffled quest of beauty. Such a history must be broad enough for the Federalist and for Webster's oratory, for Beecher's sermons and Greeley's ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... last week for me, and only hopes for it this week. And after this week comes the British Association business, which always fills every column for a month, so that a further delay is possible enough. 'It will increase,' says Mr. Dilke, 'the zest of the reader,' whereas I say (at least think) that it will help him quite to forget me. I explain all this lest you should blame me for neglect to yourself in not sending the papers. I am so pleased that you like at least the second article. That ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... was thirty-five, a mirror which added weight to that testimony, and the game which taught me with some freshness at each failure that the greater game it symbolizes is not meant to be won—only to be played forever with as eager a zest, as daring a hope, as ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Johnny, for where they went there was zest of life; and the boys, knowing well that Johnny never wore flowers, made instant way for him at ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... of Louis XV. discussed probabilities and mental reservations. And in New England, at Puritan firesides, the passing stranger in the olden times, when religion was a life, entered into theological discussions with as much zest as he now would describe the fluctuations of stocks or passing vanities of crinoline and hair dyes. Nor is it one of the best signs of this material age that the interest in the great questions which tasked the intellects of our fathers is passing away. But there is a mighty permanence in great ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Nicholas, glancing at the clock which wanted only five minutes of the hour. "I wanted to give him his conge, and introduce him to the new agent at the same moment. He believes firmly in my demise, by the way, which would certainly have added zest to the business. And now—well, it will be a pretty flat ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... might be worth seeing. A conversation followed upon the delight Charlie had felt in beholding celebrated places, the scenes of great events in past ages; a delight that an American can never know in his own country, and which, on that very account, he enjoys with a far keener zest than a European. Miss Patsey seemed to enter a little into this pleasure; but, upon the whole, it was quite evident that all the imagination of the family had fallen to Charlie's share. The young man thought little of this, however: when Judy had carried away the remains of the supper, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... breaking through the crust of winter. Touches of green were appearing on the forests and in the fields. Now and then the wonderful pungent odor of the wilderness came to them and life seemed to have taken on new zest. They were but boys in years, and the terrible scenes of Donelson could not ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... her forward. It had not occurred to her that the task of guiding that heavy, swerving thing through the unbroken road was something beyond her powers of endurance. She often had driven it a hundred miles and more without resting, or without losing zest in the enterprise: then why should she fear the small matter of thirty miles, even under the most trying ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... fragrance, tenderness, and zest. "To a Wild Rose," "Will o' the Wisp," "In Autumn," "From Uncle Remus," and "By a Meadow Brook" are slight in poetic substance, though executed with charm and humour; but the five other pieces—"At ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... appreciation, as it was honestly and intelligently given. Indeed, by-and-by, he began to send contributions of his own to the more scientific of the medical journals, and thus partly in receiving, partly in giving out information and accurate thought, a new zest was added to his life. There was not much intercourse between Lord Hollingford and himself; the one was too silent and shy, the other too busy, to seek each other's society with the perseverance required to do away with the social distinction of rank ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... opportunity of meeting at my father-in-law Mr. Grogan's, where he often dined, a most worthy priest, Father O'Leary, and have listened frequently, with great zest, to anecdotes which he used to tell with a quaint yet spirited humor, quite unique. His manner, his air, his countenance, all bespoke wit, talent, and a good heart. I liked his company excessively, and have often regretted I did not cultivate ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... had left the bewildered Loony Ryan in the pool parlor he was in a New Orleans sleeper, southward bound. He knew that he was getting within striking distance of Binhart, at last. The zest of the chase took possession of him. The trail was no longer a "cold" one. He knew which way Binhart was headed. And he knew he was not more than a ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... "Alarms and excursions and blue eyes must not turn me from my task. Let's see—what was my task? A deep heart-searching novel, a novel devoid of rabid melodrama. It becomes more difficult every minute here at Baldpate Inn. But that should only add more zest to the struggle. I devote the next two ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... debate was native to him; here he drank delight of battle with his peers. In after days, when he drove by this stately pile, or when on rare occasions his duty called him here, he greeted his old haunts with the affectionate zest of a child of the house; during all the last ten years of his life, filled as they were with activity and glory, he never ceased to be homesick for this hall. When he came to the presidency, there was not a day when ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... enjoin mortification of the flesh. And even in those modern denominations which have been organized under the latest formulations of the creed, in a modern industrial community, it is felt that all levity and avowed zest in the enjoyment of the good things of this world is alien to the true clerical decorum. Whatever suggests that these servants of an invisible master are living a life, not of devotion to their master's good fame, but of application to their own ends, jars harshly on ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... as water and fuel. Our unsullied appetites demand few condiments. Why olives, when if need be—and the need has not yet manifested itself—as shrewd a relish and as cleansing a flavour is to be obtained from the pale yellow flowers of the male papaw, steeped in brine—a decoration and a zest combined? Our mango chutney etherealises our occasional salted goat-mutton—and we know that the chutney is what ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... in his arms as though she were a feather, and carried her on up the gulch to the foot of the Titanic chute. Here, resting on a flat rock in the cool semi-twilight of the gorge bottom, they ate their lunch and talked with as much zest as if they were ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... which his grandfather had been made, "who loved one only and who clave to her," and to whom it would have been a moral impossibility to flirt with one woman while he was making serious love to another. Lastly, the society of his friends had acquired an added zest by the probability of its being a dangerous luxury. He loved dearly to poise himself on the edge of peril, though of course, like all who do so, he had not the slightest intention of ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... younger than himself—to realize that he has taken two or three strides for their one, towards the irrevocable bourne; and has abridged, by so much, the season in which life is worth having for what may be accomplished, or for any zest that may be found ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... she played her part, repelling always with a hint of invitation, denying with the promise in her fascinated eyes of ultimate surrender to his ardor. In the zest of the pursuit the minutes slipped away unnoticed. Never had a woman seemed to him more subtly elusive, and never had he felt more sure of himself. Her charm grew on him, stirred his pulses to a faster beat. For it ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... shrine of the back drawing-room. Her chair was placed in the large room, and she was the centre of a lively group of callers who were discussing the events of the week in Parliament, with the light and mordant zest of people well acquainted with the personalities they were talking of. She was apparently better in health, he noticed; at any rate, she was more at ease, and enjoying herself more than on the previous ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was full of fun for them. They made plenty of acquaintances among the other brown-faced farmer boys, and entered into the spirit of the occasion with the hearty zest of boys out holidaying. They were a little careful about not being too free with their spending-money. "'Cause we're out on a long run, you know," Old Tilly said. But what they did spend went for ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... into a world of make-believe, where the tyranny and cause and effect is no longer felt. It is not a hard word to call it childish; the imagination of these early Romantics had a child's weakness and a child's delightful confidence and zest. ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... Sometimes in her play-hours she would endeavor to prepare her two younger sisters for the lessons which they would receive from their father, and, when the time came for her to join in giving them regular instruction, she entered into it with zest ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... apparent difficulty lies the main truth and zest of the parable. The doom of sterility, be it carefully noted, was uttered by Jesus, not so much because of the absence of fruit, but because the tree, by its premature display of leaves, challenged expectations which a closer inspection did not realise. "It was punished," says an able ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... confess,' said Aunt Catherine, with all the reluctance of a high-spirited Dynevor,—'I must confess that Louis is no sportsman! He was eager about it once, till he had become a good shot; and then it lost all zest for him, and he prefers his own vagaries. He never takes a gun unless James drives him out; and, oddly enough, his father is quite vexed at his indifference, as if it were not manly. If his father would only ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and brute force have hitherto occupied. But the apparent perfection of this condition appears to me to involve an essential contradiction to the first principle of the doctrine of human blessedness—namely, that man in order to be content needs discontent. In order to find a zest in enjoyment, this child of the dust must first suffer hunger; his possessions satiate him unless they are seasoned with longing and hope; his striving is paralysed unless he is inspired by unattained ideals. But what new ideal can henceforth hover before the mind of man—what ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... dressed himself quickly and grasping his bag hurried from the car, anxious to be at his task, which, to tell the truth, he approached with keen zest. He was beginning to enter into the spirit of the work to which he had been assigned, and which was to provide him with much more excitement than he ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the table, and when the kettle was singing its approval in the corner, then, only,—when all these preliminaries were gone through with,—did the possessors of the hands that devised them seat themselves on a low wooden settee opposite the table and enjoy the zest and ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... either his earnestness or his manner banished from the text, took refuge in the illustrations and there disported itself with a wild zest and vigour. Indeed to their popularity several critics have ascribed the success of the book, but for this there is no sufficient authority or probability. Clever as they are, it is more probable that they ran, in popularity, but an equal race with the text. The precise amount of Brandt's ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... things that lived or grew upon them had been seen by us hundreds of times, but after some months at school they always seemed new again, and we got our little pawn nets and baskets, and went prawning with as great zest as ever. ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... had so great a difference, although they were so constituted as to see most things very differently, found themselves glad to be in each other's company. Their hearts grew warmer by mere proximity; they talked of old family incidents, and of the incidents of the present, with equal zest. The one thing they did not immediately mention was the subject of the quarrel about which they had not yet come to ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... Calandrino mistrusted, entered with no less zest than the others into the affair, and was their confederate for Calandrino's discomfiture; accordingly by Bruno's direction he hied to Florence, and finding Monna Tessa:—"Thou hast scarce forgotten, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... night his happiness was special; he had returned in the afternoon from a week's visit to London, and he was glad to get back again. He loved his wife and adored his daughter, in his own way, and he enjoyed the feminized domestic atmosphere of his fine new house with exactly the same zest as, on another evening, he might have enjoyed the blue haze of the billiard-room at the Conservative Club. The interior of the drawing-room realized very well Peake's ideals. It was large, with two magnificent windows, practicably comfortable, and unpretentious. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... to girlhood—the pets of the Queen and the Court, the playfellows of the King, and the acknowledged heiresses of their uncle's millions; and of them all, not one had a keener eye to the future than Olympe of the long face, pointed chin, and dimples. It was she who entered with the greatest zest into the romps and games of her playmate, Louis XIV., who surrounded him with the most delicate flatteries and attentions, and practised all her childish arts and coquetries to win his favour. And she succeeded to such an extent that it was ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... that he sought; every morning he went on with renewed hopes, nor did the evening, though it brought with it no success, bring with it the gloom and heaviness of a real disappointment. In all his life, including its earliest and happiest days, he had never known such a spring and zest as now filled his veins, and gave lightsomeness to his limbs; this spirit gave to the beautiful country which he trod a still richer beauty than it had ever borne, and he sought his ancient home as if he had found his way into Paradise and were there endeavoring to trace out the sight [site] ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... jaunt, in which the pleasures of sea-bathing have added a zest to the enjoyment of the race-course, the followers of the turf will seek, on coming back to Paris in the early days of September, the autumn meetings at Fontainebleau and at Longchamps. But they will not find the paddock of the latter at this season of the year ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... scratching down a figure now and then, and idly going back to the time when I was a younger man than now, but even then with neither wife nor child, and no home beyond an eating-house; thinking how I caught old Knowles's zest for things which lay beyond trade-laws; how eager I grew in the search of them; how he inoculated me with Abolitionism, Communism, every other fever that threatened to destroy the commercial status of the world, and substitute a single-eyed regard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... zest with which the men finally set fire to the house at my order was enhanced by this previous abstemiousness; but there is a fearful fascination in the use of fire, which every child knows in the abstract, and which I found to hold true in the practice. On our way down river ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... well that the entertainment was continued on the veranda for the better part of another hour. Doubled up in his chair, abnormal, weird, he recounted in particular the exploits of Stingaree (included a garbled version of the recent fiasco across the Murray) with a zest only equalled by his confidant undertaking to avenge the death of Robert Duncan before another day was out; all listened in a rapt silence, and the younger men were duly disappointed when the party broke up prematurely between nine and ten. But they also had played their part in a ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... had been a surveyor's lad; nobody had voted for Adams because stately old ladies designated him as "that cobbler's son." But when Jackson came into office the people had just had almost a surfeit of regular training in their chief magistrates. There was a certain zest in the thought of a change, and the nation ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... lends a zest To the dull, pointless, hacknied jest; He saws the air 'mid welcome loud Of laughter ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... gratified ambition. All the same, I said nothing touching on the book for fear lest she should misunderstand me, nor hinted—that which I felt myself—that this scene put back ten years, when I was full of vague ambitions and unaccomplished plans, would not have possessed the zest it had ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... when we came down to the class, we found the blackboard covered with an Assyrian inscription written out by himself before lecture hour, and the zest, the joy with which he discoursed upon the strange figures and signs showed that, though white of hair and bent in frame, he was in the real nature of him very young. For two days he lectured on this inscription with the most assured belief that we were following every ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... natives worked with heart and soul; for love, and the desire to please and be pleased, had been awakened within them. Besides this, the work had for them all the zest of novelty. They wrought at it with somewhat of the feelings of children at play,—pausing frequently in the midst of their toil to gaze in wonder and admiration at the growing edifice, which would have done no little credit to a professional architect ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... great interest, and to most of them the story of his past was well known. Many of the old men who sat around the broad fire-place in the village inn, could remember when he was as gay a lad as any in the village, and had joined in their sports with all the zest and enthusiasm of a wild and unrestrained disposition; and when he marched away to join his regiment, no step was firmer, and no form ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... oldest port; All enter then with glee in every look, And not a member thinks about a book. Still, let me own, there are some vacant hours, When minds might work, and men exert their powers: Ere wine to folly spurs the giddy guest, But gives to wit its vigour and its zest; Then might we reason, might in turn display Our several talents, and be wisely gay; We might—but who a tame discourse regards, When Whist is named, and we behold the Cards? We from that time are neither grave nor gay; Our ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... cried Elsie; 'the remembrance would have added a zest to the monotony of your every-day life, you would never willingly ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... life in which a community of interest fails to give added zest and energy. There is no possible ground of association on which societies are not formed, and the trivial, fictitious, or imaginary pretences on which men thus combine, meet, and act in concert, are manifest proofs of a social proclivity so strong as to create reasons for its indulgence where such ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... to have come to him in fullest measure, just at the age when most men seemed to have parted with those qualities. As an undergraduate, he had been more aware of fitfulness and weariness than anything; only gradually had he become conscious of concentration, sustained zest, intention. Then he had tended to condemn enthusiasm as a species of defective manners. Now he lived by its steady light. Then he had been at the mercy of a new idea, an attractive personality. He shuddered to think how easily he had made ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... by his chief. The ambitious man may be denied the coveted chance to take the step upward to the bigger opportunities for which he rightly believes himself qualified. If his deserts and his utmost efforts do not win the promotion he desires, he grows discouraged. He loses the taste of zest for his work. His earlier optimism oozes away. After awhile his ambition slumps. Then he resigns himself sullenly to the conviction that he is a failure but ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... loneliness, I fell back into my old way of life. I shunned the world, because its gayeties had lost their zest. I did not care to travel, for home now possessed a charm it never had before. I knew there was an eager face that always brightened when I came, light feet that flew to welcome me, and hands that loved to minister to every want ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to. M. Nicole seemed to be waiting for the conversation to be resumed. Prasville, sheltered behind the piles of books on the table, sat with one hand grasping his revolver and the other touching the push of the electric bell. He felt the whole strength of his position with a keen zest. He held the list. He ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... the two French air squadrons whose headquarters were near by, had entered into the affair with great zest. They blessed the little Irish pilot for his suggestion. And Sergeant Barney McGee was on the jump all day long, displaying all the sterling traits that distinguish able generals and leaders ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... she were not, he would boast and swagger, as he was but too apt to do. That he should go back at the risk of his life; that any one who found him on English ground might kill him; and that many would certainly try to kill him, he knew very well. But that only gave special zest to the adventure. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... in turning things over, changing their shape, discovering their possibilities, making of them some new contrivance. Use, in these experimental minds, as in nature, is only incidental. There is an irrational creative impulse, a zest in novelty, in progression, in beating the other man, or, as they say, in breaking the record. There is also a fascination in seeing the world unbosom itself of ancient secrets, obey man's coaxing, and take on unheard-of shapes. The highest building, the largest steamer, the fastest train, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... them very much as I had done the night before, and I warrant you, my dears, that they listened with more zest and eagerness than did Mr. Walpole. But they were all shrewd men, and kept their suspicions, if they had any, to themselves. Captain Daniel would have me omit nothing,—my intimacy with Mr. Fox, the speech at Brooks's Club, and the riding-match ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Indeed, but for the epistles, we should have a very poor opinion of the apostles. Paul in particular is described as setting a fashion which has remained in continual use to this day. Whenever he addresses an audience, he dwells with great zest on his misdeeds before his pseudo conversion, with the effect of throwing into stronger relief his present state of blessedness; and he tells the story of that conversion over and over again, ending with exhortations ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... tints are Truth and Beauty at their best; And when you to Manfrini's palace go,[200] That picture (howsoever fine the rest) Is loveliest to my mind of all the show; It may perhaps be also to your zest, And that's the cause I rhyme upon it so: Tis but a portrait of his Son, and Wife, And self; but such ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron |
