"Lithe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sharp little cry of delight he stepped out into the moonlight, and so quick were his movements in the next moments that the eye could scarcely follow them. Those who have seen a panther in liberty know there is nothing so graceful, so quick, so lithe and noiseless in animal life. And Deulin was like a panther at that moment. He leaped across the pavement to give one man a stinging switch across the cheek with the flat of the blade, and was back ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Daniel in the lions' den; and back in the days of Pericles, the Greeks were fond of showing the beautiful youth, just approaching adolescence, in the nude, as the god of Love. When the face has all the soft beauty of a woman, and the figure, slight, slender, lithe and graceful, carries only a suggestion of the masculine strength to come—then beauty is at perihelion. The "Eros" of Phidias was not the helpless, dumpy cherub "Cupid"—he was a slender-limbed boy of twelve years who showed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... impetuosity, yet with a precision that even to her untrained perception expressed a most deadly concentration. Lithe and active, supremely confident, he parried his enemy's attack, and the grace of the man, combined with a certain mastery that was also in a fashion familiar to her, attracted her irresistibly, held her spellbound. There was nothing brutal about him, no hint of ferocity, only a finished ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... slipped away at a whisper from Sweetwater.) They were lit with a similar expression of anxious interest and growing doubt. His own countenance was a study of conflicting and by no means cheerful emotions. Suddenly his aspect changed. With a quick twist of his lithe, if awkward, body, he threw himself lengthwise on the ground, and began tearing at the earth inside the hole, like a ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... the opposite slope (slopes are, you must remember, here as steep as house-roofs, the last spurs of true mountains) is covered with a grass like tall rye-grass, but growing in tufts. That is the famous Guinea-grass {78e} which, introduced from Africa, has spread over the whole West Indies. Dark lithe coolie prisoners, one a gentle young fellow, with soft beseeching eyes, and 'Felon' printed on the back of his shirt, are cutting it for the horses, under the guard of a mulatto turnkey, a tall, steadfast, dignified man; and between us and them are ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... incredibly fine! Is it oriole, redbird, or bluebird, Or some strange, un-Auduboned new bird? All one, sir, both this bird and that bird, The whole flight are all the same catbird! The whole visible and invisible choir you see On one lithe twig of yon green tree. Flitting, feathery Blondel! Listen to his rondel! To his lay romantical! To his sacred canticle! Hear him lilting, See him tilting His saucy head and tail, and fluttering While uttering ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... hours in the endeavor to devise means by which he might turn her frank gaze upon himself. In fancy he imaged her clothed in fitting garments, walking with that free, beautiful, lithe and swinging gait into the splendor ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... leisurely, and stretched his lithe body luxuriantly on the ground for a siesta. When he resumed his occupation the sun had considerably declined from the meridian. The fish were again biting, and he landed two in as ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... gave a bound as she realized that she was at last alone and untrammeled. She pulled her Russian cap well into place, thrust her hands deep into her pockets, and set out for the middle of the lake, her lithe young body swaying gently forward as she was carried this way and that by her gliding feet. She looked about for John, but he was nowhere to be seen, and she concluded that he had given up expecting her and had either gone home or joined other friends. Ruth was forging about after her own ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... soldier, bearing best Her girl's lithe body under matron gray, And opening new eyes on each new day With faith concealed and courage unconfessed; Jealous to cloak a blessing in a jest, Clothe beauty carefully in disarray, And love absurdly, that no word betray The worship all ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... light from the flames playing over her lithe, exquisite figure, moulded in a gown of scintillating scales of black jet. Then, seeing I had finished my mental note of line and composition, she half turned her pretty head and caught sight of the ruby, ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... on clouds of flame, a girl was dancing. She was black, and lithe, and tall, and willowy. Her garments twined and flew around the delicate moulding of her dark, young, half-naked limbs. A heavy mass of hair clung motionless to her wide forehead. Her arms twirled and flickered, and body and soul seemed quivering and whirring ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... is a long lithe creature with little flesh, and, from the lack of exercise, the muscles are badly developed. Such a specimen affords a poor example of the grand animal in its native jungles, whose muscles are almost ponderous in their development from the continual exertion in nightly rambles ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the firm, lithe hand, looking at him hard and straight. "You're very cussed," he said slowly. "I wish I'd had the upbringing ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... seventeenth century, in an English country district, two lads romped on the same lea and chased the same butterflies. One was a little brown-eyed boy, with red cheeks, fine round form, and fiery temper. The other was a gentle child, tall, lithe, and blonde. The one was the son of a man of wealth and a noble lady, and carried his captive butterflies to a mansion-house, and kept them in a crystal case. The other ran from the fields to a farm-house, and thought of the lea as a grain field. It might have ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... did he speak! I shivered, hid my tingling cheek Behind thy marble face; And prayed the gods to be like him, Firm in temper, lithe of limb, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... let him know. The story used to be current that in their younger days this father and mother were the handsomest pair the town of Boston could show. This son of theirs was "rather tall," says Mr. Phillips, "lithe, very graceful in movement and gesture, and there was something marked and admirable in the set of his head on his shoulders,"—a peculiar elegance which was most noticeable in those later days when I knew him. Lady Byron long afterwards spoke of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... going down the bank, followed eagerly by the little Sanford, who had also his interest in the arrival of the parcels from London. There came after them presently a lithe young negro boy of fifteen, not yet two years out of Africa. He was clad in nothing but his native blackness, which was deemed sufficient for a half-grown negro in that day. Mrs. Browne had sent black Jocko after ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... the free, unfettered swing of her arms as she rested them lightly, after a half yawn, on her lithe hips, suggested his next speech, although still ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... playing soft Italian music. Suddenly and silently, as if in a dream, the great entrance doors drew apart, the band changed into a great military fanfare, and a splendid troop of cavalry charged in, the lithe young troopers and the sleek horses with muscles of steel under their satin skins, horse and man moving as one. After a dash around the hall, they proceeded to show what troopers and horses could do. The soldiers ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... up at him wistfully. Her lithe form seemed almost to cling to the old man. Instinctively, Jacob, Meredith, Sir Wilfrid Bury withdrew their eyes. The room held its breath. As for Lord Lackington, he colored like ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stationary country; the occurrence and recurrence of the same church tower at the end of one long vista after another; and, conspicuous among these sources of quiet pleasure, the character and variety of the road itself, along which he takes his way. Not only near at hand, in the lithe contortions with which it adapts itself to the interchanges of level and slope, but far away also, when he sees a few hundred feet of it upheaved against a hill and shining in the afternoon sun, he will find it an object so changeful and enlivening that he can always pleasurably busy his mind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strike the swift running of the water and hang for a moment, as if irresolute, uncertain whether it would turn its bow upstream or be swerved broadside. The moment it hung there seemed minutes in duration. They saw Henry Burns, lithe and agile, but cool and self-possessed, strike his pole into the slope of the water where he had seen a shallow ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... me very well, I turned with intent to step the mast. And now I saw the sail was ill-stowed, the canvas lying all abroad and as I rose I beheld this canvas stirred as by a greater wind; then as I stared me this, it lifted, and from beneath it crept a shape that rose up very lithe and graceful and stood with hands reached out towards me, and then as I staggered back ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... kindled fire in return. When he was not at Crownlands she could laugh at him, even though her thoughts were full of him. But when he was there, life to her was more radiant, more full, more glowing with colour and fragrance. The books he touched, the chair he had at breakfast, his young, lithe body in its golfing knickerbockers, or his sleek black head above the dull black of evening wear, haunted her oddly. He troubled her, but she had neither quite the power nor quite ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... bunch of scarlet rock-columbine which is in a wine-glass of water before her; every few moments stopping and holding her work at a distance, to contemplate its effect. At this moment there steps behind her chair a tall, lithe figure, a face with a rich Spanish complexion, large black eyes, glowing cheeks, marked eyebrows, and lustrous black hair arranged in shining braids around her head. It is our old friend, Sally Kittridge, whom common fame calls the handsomest girl of all the ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sunbeams fell upon the stairway. He heard Ellen singing in the music-room; he met the rich fragrance of coffee. Mrs. Witherspoon, with a smile of quiet happiness, stood at the foot of the stairs. Ellen came out with a lithe skip and threw a kiss at him. Witherspoon sat in the breakfast-room reading a ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate's squire. Third ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... up it was like the lithe Greek athlete compared with the brawny Roman gladiator. "Three to one on Locasto," some one shouted. Then a great hush came over the house, so that it might have been empty and deserted. Time ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... must pass through—how much confusion and twitter I am conscious of!—will hardly touch you. Few heartaches, few tears. Some day you will find yourself in a tawny land of harsh outlines: it is probably southern Spain. There you will meet a man as lithe as a panther, his shoulders covered with gold, driving his sword through the neck of a bull. You are speaking to him at night. He kisses your hands. But that, too, will soon end in laughter. You will marry three times, but ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... released herself with a lithe movement of her wrist and shoulder, and the next moment seemed to slip into the ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... in her story, was unconsciously acting out the thrilling scene of her dialogue with the Indian, even imitating his voice and gestures. And Kemper and I listened and watched her breathlessly, fascinated by her lithe and supple grace as well as by the astounding story she was so frankly unfolding with the consummate artlessness of a ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... are like the twang of a bow-string. Hardy was like that—short, lithe, sunburned, vivid. Into the lives of Jarrick, Hill, and myself, old classmates of his, he came and went in the fashion of one of those queer winds that on a sultry day in summer blow unexpectedly up a city street out of nowhere. His comings excited us; his goings ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... tell the truth, as Enriquez and I fell back, although I had insisted upon still keeping hold of the end of the riata, it was a picture to admire. The petite[158-1] figure of the young girl and the graceful folds of her skirt admirably harmonized with Chu Chu's lithe contour, and as the mare arched her slim neck and raised her slender head under the pressure of the reins, it was so like the lifted velvet-capped toreador[159-1] crest of Consuelo herself, that they seemed ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... slender like his daughter, and walked with lithe, slightly feline movements. His face was oval, clear skinned, and with a pallid complexion made still paler by his dark hair and eyes and a tiny mustache, almost black and with waxed and pointed ends. He was good-looking as to features, but the ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... life and vivacity, the young wife went on from one point to another, higher and higher; her lithe figure brought out against the sky, as occasionally she plunged her iron-pointed staff deep into the snow, and turned to admire the vast panorama at her feet. Her husband was making the ascent at a slower pace, looking up ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... was very poor and sad also, for no child had Heaven sent to cheer his old age, and in his heart there was no hope of rest from work till he died and was laid in the quiet grave. Every morning he went forth into the woods and hills wherever the bamboo reared its lithe green plumes against the sky. When he had made his choice, he would cut down these feathers of the forest, and splitting them lengthwise, or cutting them into joints, would carry the bamboo wood home and make it into various articles for the household, and he and ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... back his lance, and both rushing together, return to the fray. One against the other rides, and so fiercely they smite each other that both lances break and the horses fall beneath them. But they, being seated on their steeds, sustain no harm; so they quickly rise, for they were strong and lithe. They stand on foot in the middle of the garden, and straightway attack each other with their green swords of German steel, and deal great wicked blows upon their bright and gleaming helmets, so that they hew them into bits, and their eyes shoot out flame. No greater ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... of part of it. "Back and forth across the garden the little yellow birds were flitting, dodging through currant and gooseberry bushes, hiding in the lilacs, swaying for an instant on swinging sprays of grape vines, and then flashing out across the garden beds like yellow sunbeams. They were lithe, slender, dainty little creatures, and were so quick in their movements that I could not recognize them at first, but when one of them hopped down before me, lifted a fallen leaf and dragged a cutworm from beneath it, and, turning his head, gave me a sidewise glance with his victim still struggling ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... a daughter of sixteen, an only child. Of course the first time I saw her at church I fell desperately in love: boys always do that with a new face. She was a sprightly girl, with soft blue eyes, dark hair, fair complexion, white teeth, a lithe figure and a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... was running up the stairs so quickly that it actually seemed as if she had no need to touch the steps at all. As the gentleman was taking up all the room, the only space left for a passage was under the arm with which he held the railing. Here the lithe ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... as the lithe, graceful figure of the handsome and fascinating Mr. Abel Newt bent in passing, Arthur Merlin, who felt, at the instant Abel passed, as if his own feet were very large, and his clothes ugly, and his movement stupidly ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... two-thirds of my regimental pay per week for instruction in handling the gloves. He gave me an hour each night for six weeks. At the end of the first week, I had gained an advantage over him. I had a very long reach, and a body as lithe as a panther. I gave up prayer meetings, lectures, and socials, and devoted my self religiously to what is called ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... the Athenaeum cast. S. C—— thought the difference was one of size. This work may be seen at a glance; yet does not tire one after survey. It has the freshness of the woods, and of morning dew. I admire those long lithe limbs, and that column of a throat. The Diana is a woman's ideal of beauty; its elegance, its spirit, its graceful, peremptory air, are what we like in our own sex: the Venus is for men. The sleeping Cleopatra cannot be looked at enough; ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... and peaceful as he lay there in the gloom. She could not see whether his lips moved. She was too distraught to note if his heart was beating. It seemed incredible that she, a weak woman, should have crushed the life out of that lithe and active frame with one blow. Then a dark stain appeared on the white skin. Her hands, her lips, were covered with blood. She tasted it. The whole earth reeked of it. It scorched her as with vitriol. She rose and ran blindly. The darkness appalled her. No matter now what ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... pleasure to see him again—a creature of abounding vitality whom time cannot alter. He is as lithe-limbed as when he was a boy, and as lithe-witted. I don't know how his consciousness could have arrived at appreciation of Antoinette's cooking, for he talked all through dinner, giving me an account of his mirific ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... still further spread her feet, put her hands behind some pretended coat-tails, let the brush slip from under her arms, so that it fell to the floor with a racket, stooped with an affectation of clumsiness which seemed impossible to the lithe figure, while mumbling something inarticulate in an apparent paroxysm of embarrassment,—which quickly became a genuine inability ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... a long time ago. Them is days when I'm young an' lithe an' strong. I can heft a pony an' I'm six foot two in my moccasins. No, I ain't so tall by three inches now; old age shortens a gent up ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... the fresh tracks. His speed was not less than that of the rabbit, and his endurance was vastly greater. Being very long in the body, and extremely short in the legs, he ran in a most peculiar fashion, arching his lithe back almost like a measuring-worm and straightening out like a steel spring suddenly released. These sinuous bounds were grotesque enough in appearance, but singularly effective. The trail they made, overlapping that of the rabbit, but quite distinct from it, varied according to the depth of the ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... promptly replied the lithe, good-looking son of the East as he salaamed. "If the mem-sahib will pardon her servant he would advise driving to Jessore and resting the night there at the dak bungalow, that is if the mem-sahib is ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... bowed low to the magister. Being about the court, he had for Udal's learning and office a reverence that neither the printer nor his grandfather could share. He unfastened his grey cloak at the neck and cast it into a corner after his hat. His figure flashed out, lithe, young, a blaze of scarlet with a crowned rose embroidered upon a chest rendered enormous by much wadding. He was serving his apprenticeship as ensign in the gentlemen of the King's guard, and because his dead father had been beloved by the Duke ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... proffered. After a little, however, she recovered and went on without assistance. Dick could scarcely believe his eyes, as from time to time he stole a sidelong glance at this silent girl, who walked with lithe and rapid stride. She was wrapped in his long coat, yet it did not hide her slender grace. He could not see her face, which was concealed ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... dazzled by the brilliant display of beauty and fashion that lighted up the classic walls as with living sunbeams. Such clusters of mimic blossoms and flowing ringlets wreathed together round fair, blooming faces; such a cloud of soft, airy drapery floating over lithe figures, swaying forward like light boughs agitated by the wind; such a fluttering of snowy fans, making the cool, pleasant sound of rain drops pattering among April leaves; such bright eager eyes, turned at every sounding ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... his retreat, and his wanderings among the mountains of Armenia; here he talked with his friends, and made other such symposia as he has given us a taste of at the house of Callias the Athenian; here he ranged over the whole country-side with his horses and dogs: a stalwart and lithe old gentleman, without a doubt; able to mount a horse or to manage one, with the supplest of the grooms; and with a keen eye, as his book shows, for the good points in horse-flesh. A man might make a worse mistake ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... themselves. She was an old father's child. Nurse Branscome was midwife enough to know what freakishness and frailty belong to children begotten by old age. Yet Corona, albeit gaunt with growing, was lithe and well-formed, and of a healthy complexion and a clear, though it ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... major went forward to make the final preparations, whilst Mr. Caryll, attended by Wharton, rapidly divested himself of coat and waistcoat, then kicked off his light shoes, and stood ready, a slight, lithe, graceful figure in white Holland shirt and pearl-colored ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... swift pushing back of a bolt, and the door flew open. The shoes she had seen in the hall had told her the truth. It was the man she expected who stood for the fifth part of a second in the doorway of her darkened room, then, lithe and noiseless as an Indian, made for the window. The thief was taken completely by surprise. When Angela suddenly cried out, he had been in the act of letting himself down to the floor, by slipping under ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... perceived, he was close to the chevaux-de-frise. In vain, however, he endeavoured to find his way through it. The garrison were too much occupied with what was going forward on the other side of the house to observe him; indeed, his small, black, lithe body could scarcely have been perceived. He ran on like a mouse, looking for a hole through which to escape, and considering whether he should not cry out for assistance and ask to be taken in. At last he got to an opening, and in he darted, just as two men rushed up ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... the greatest injustice. You think we are playing a game of deception with you. But tell me,—what would tempt me and my son to such a thing? Does he not love Ingeborg? Where could he choose him a better bride? Is she not fair and lithe? Is her father not rich and mighty? Is not her family mentioned with honor as far as ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... whistle before you are out of the wood, and Brady's triumph was short-lived. Swift as a shadow, a lithe figure darted out from among the trees and planted itself ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... kitchen of the deacon's house might be seen the lithe, comely form of Diana Pitkin presiding over the roaring great oven which was to engulf the armies of pies and cakes which were in due course of preparation ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his hand raised to strike when something happened. A lithe, muscular form glided under the upraised fist, and the next moment there was a sharp crack as the newcomer's fist collided with the ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... men, living in the midst of nature, were a part of nature themselves; nothing was changed by their presence; they altered not the flutter of a leaf or the posture of a stone, but stole in and out noiseless and lithe, and left behind them no trace of their passage. It is not so with the white man: before him, nature flies and perishes; he clothes the earth in the thoughts of his own mind, cast in forms of matter, and contemplates them with pride; ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... reined in his mount, and with a lithe forward-slipping action appeared to reach the ground in one long step. It was a peculiar movement in its quickness and inasmuch that while performing it the rider did not swerve in the slightest from a square front to the group ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... with a lithe figure and smooth black hair brushed straight back from his forehead had paused at the table on his ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Her lithe, blithe form outbraves the storm That spreads disaster in its shadow, And when it clears, her form appears A flower upon the greening meadow; And if, for fame, you'll have me name The land of most bewitching daughters, My heart replies, with softening sighs, The land ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... that I would be very happy, and scrambled away up the path to Sammy's house. Then I looked back, before opening the door. I saw her still walking, followed by Frenchy who bore the salmon in triumph. I could see how lithe she was and how the health and strength of out-of-doors showed in her ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... same thing, but it's Black Jack, well enough. He started out when he was sixteen, they say, and he's been raising the devil ever since. You should have seen them pick him up—as if he were asleep, and not dead. What a body! Lithe as a panther. No larger than I am, but they say he was a ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... pleasure in the work itself: how strange that hope must seem to some of my readers—to most of them! Yet I think that to all living things there is a pleasure in the exercise of their energies, and that even beasts rejoice in being lithe and swift and strong. But a man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works. Not only his own thoughts, but ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... adolescent genii on the right hand possess a high degree of natural grace. Yet even here what strikes one most is the charm of their attitude, the lovely interlacing of their arms and breasts, the lithe alertness of the one lad contrasted with the thoughtful leaning languor of his comrade. Only perhaps in some drawings of combined male figures made by Ingres for his picture of the Golden Age have lines of equal dignity and simple ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... neck of the blouse her deeply tanned throat rose like a bronze column; the roses in her cheeks and on her lips relieved the sun-darkened skin. Her hair was in two great plaits and it was evident that she seldom troubled about a hat. She was lithe, graceful as she could be, and bubbling over with good health if not ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... pull off blouse and helmet. By careful inquiry in the outer Hut he finds an ice-axe, crowbar and hurricane lantern. The next move is to the outer veranda, where a few loose boards are soon removed, and the storeman, with a lithe twist, is ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... over the springy grass, and did not mind her. Slowly, stealthily he went—near, nearer, and yet nearer the root of the beech tree with every movement of his lithe, wriggling body. He is now only a few feet from the squirrels, who seem not to notice the intruder. He puts out his hand. He almost touches the smallest member of the group, a bright-eyed, furry little fellow. Joan starts to her feet in excitement. Darby does exactly as he had planned—makes ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... interest in the servants' hall. The newly engaged maids accepted him for his youth and sharp manners, as an innovation which they rather fancied than otherwise. Borkins alone stood aloof. It seemed to the man that here, in Dollops' lithe, young form, in the very ginger of his carrotty hair, in the stridency of this cockney accent—which Cleek had endeavoured to eradicate without a particle of success—was the reembodiment of the older, shorter, ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... flirtation of the most audacious and innocent description. The focus of the whole carnival is found in the "piazza" or veranda, and no prettier sight in its way can be imagined than the groups and rows of "rockers" and wicker chairs, each occupied by a lithe young girl in a summer frock, or her athletic admirer ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... rattle went on for a second or two, then gradually subsided. Bob lay white-faced, and still as death. Jeremy drew a step closer and then gave a choked cry of relief. The snake's smooth, diamond-marked body remained coiled for the spring. Its lithe forepart was thrust forward from the top coil and the venemous, blunt head—but the head was no more. Jeremy's ball had taken ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... well I recollect a fugitive impression left on me by an early morning in Benares, now many years ago. I threaded its extraordinary streets, narrower than the needle's eye, and crowded with strange, lithe, nearly naked human beings, with black, straight, long wet hair, and brown shining skins, jostled at every step by holy bulls or cows, roaming at their own sweet will with large placid lustrous eyes, in an atmosphere heavy with the half-delicious, half-repulsive ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... startled the king for the first time with a revelation of the national feeling. His unslumbering suspicion "eyed David from that day." Rage and terror threw him again into the gripe of his evil spirit, and in his paroxysm he flings his heavy spear, the symbol of his royalty, at the lithe harper, with fierce vows of murder. The failure of his attempt to kill David seems to have aggravated his dread of him as bearing a charm which won all hearts and averted all dangers. A second stage ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... fathers, but tingling with life to their finger-tips, ready for anything, and impossible of control except by one whom they feared as well as reverenced. And such a man was Alexander Murray, for they knew well that, lithe and brawny as they were, there was not a man of them but he could fling out of the door and over the fence if he so wished; and they knew, too, that he would be prompt to do it if occasion arose. Hence they waited ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... slacked the sinew's knot 110 Of every tortured limb—that now he lies As if mere sleep possessed him underneath These interwoven oaks and pines. Oh cheer, Divine presenter of the healing rod, Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye, Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer! Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies! And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs, Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leaves That strew the turf around the twain! While I 120 Await, in ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... something in Carolus-Duran’s attitude when at work which recalls the swordsman. With an enormous palette in one hand and a brush in the other, he has a way of planting himself in front of his sitter that is amusingly suggestive of a duel. His lithe body sways to and fro, his fine leonine face quivers with the intense study of his model; then with a sudden spring forward, a few rapid touches are dashed on the canvas (like home strokes in the enemy’s weakest spot) ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... Boston that night Wilson passed the girl twice, and each time, though he caught only a glimpse of her lithe form bent against the whipping rain, the merest sketch of her somber features, he was distinctly conscious of the impress of her personality. As she was absorbed by the voracious horde which shuffled interminably and ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... half-savage peoples, as the "survival" of a period when men were nearer than they are or seem to be now, to the irrational world? Throughout the sprightly movement of the lads' daily life it was as if their "tribal" pets or monsters were with or within them. Tall Exmes, lithe and cruel like a tiger—it was pleasant to stroke him. The tiger was there, the parrot, the hare, the goat of course, and certainly much apishness. [35] And, one and all, they were like the creatures, in their vagrant, short, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... had adjusted his leggings, he stood lithe and erect at the bedside, and with his fist at her face, delivered a short charge, the point of which was, that unless she lay like a mouse till morning he'd have her life, though he hanged for it. And with that ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... woman. She had been ruled firmly, almost oppressively, and she had not yet revolted. Seated on the couch, she gazed out of the window at the flying snow, her brain too much on fire for thought, passion beating like a pulse in all her lithe and graceful young body, which had known the storms of life and time ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... unaccustomed pleasure mantling her neck and cheeks the girl was certainly a pretty picture. The plain and simple costume was of the cut of the provinces rather than that of Paris, but it set off the lithe and graceful figure that needed no artificiality of the dressmaker to ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... the Baggara strode haughtily. Splendid men, for the most part, tall, lithe, and muscular; men with the supreme belief in themselves, and in their cause, carrying themselves as the Norman barons might have done among a crowd of Saxons; the conquerors of the land, the most trusted followers of the successor of the Mahdi, men who felt themselves invincible. ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... Minnie, that the cat belongs to the same family as the lion, the tiger, the panther, the leopard, and several other wild animals. The tiger and cat are very similar in form and feature; they have the same rounded head and pointed ears; the long, lithe body, covered with fine, silky hair, often beautifully marked; the silent, stealthy step, occasioned by treading on the fleshy ball of the foot; the same sharp claws; the same large, lustrous eyes, capable, from the expansive power of the pupil, of ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... disobedience to the scriptural injunction, we had observed the clouds and the birds. Twice a flock of lesser frigate-birds, those dark, fish-tailed high-fliers which are for ever cutting animated "W's" in the air with long lithe wings—had appeared. Seldom do they come unless as harbingers of boisterous weather. On each recent occasion they had been absolutely trustworthy messengers. Watching them soaring and swooping, we said one to another: ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... stand about or sit on steps and wait, and yet they get through the day alive. I am distracted between the desire to ride in the baby cart and the fear of the language, mixed with the greater fear of the pain of being drawn by a fellow-being. They are a lithe set of little men and look as if they had steel springs to make them go when you look at their course. Still I have been only in autos, of which there are not many here. I get tired with the excitement of ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... New York and America may be proud; for no such powerful and veracious conception of a wild animal has ever before found artistic embodiment. The great cat crouches with head low, extended throat, and ears erect. The shoulders are drawn far back, the fore paws huddled beneath the jaws. The long, lithe back rises in an arch in the middle, sinking thence to the haunches, while the angry tail makes a strong curve along the ground to the right. The whole figure is tense and compact with restrained and waiting power; the expression is stealthy, pitiless, and terrible; ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... think, On fields of sainfoin, ruddy pink, On dells deep down and rocks upreared, On lad's-love and on old-man's-beard, On spearmint and on silver sages, On colewort and on saxifrages! Then think on pools in dimmest haunts, Unwhipped of any wind that rages, Where the lithe flag her purple flaunts, Where frogs go plopping round the edge And gnats are humming through the sedge, And on the leaf of each wide lily The scaly newts do lay their eggs And the small people dip their legs To shatter the moonshine floating stilly O'er ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... himself out before her, lithe-limbed and big-chested, the atmosphere of that firelit place seemed filled with a sense of safety. His deliberate manner of speech, quite different from the slowness of a drawl, was the natural voice of that big starry world ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... very far from being in accordance with the statutes of beauty, are of a singularly pleasing class, their faces beaming with animation and good humour. They are a small race, averaging 4 feet 5 inches, but there is perfect proportion in all parts of their form, and their supple, pliant, lithe figures are often models of symmetry. There is about the young Oraon a jaunty air and mirthful expression that distinguishes him from the Munda or Ho, who has more of the dignified gravity that is said to characterise ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... least touching note of eloquence was supplied during proceedings in House of Lords. It was the empty seat at the corner of the Front Cross Bench where on rare occasions stood the lithe erect figure, in stature not quite so high as NAPOLEON, modestly ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... at the edge of a brook to watch the silver sunfish play in the shallows, then he leaped the stream and went on into the deeper woods, a tall, lithe, strong figure, his eyes gazing at no one thing, the long slender-barreled rifle lying ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the dead upon the causeway above, a dim shadow against the star-lit sky, was another figure—unperceived by, yet completing, the group below. The arms were raised, half threateningly, half imploringly, and the lithe, vigorous form swayed in unison with the wild throbbings of a heart in which sated hate did mortal battle with outraged love. Chona had conquered; but even in the first flush of her triumph she knew that love and hope and happiness, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... ensign, just come upon the town. She actually spent an hour longer at her toilette, and made her appearance with her hair uncommonly frizzed and powdered, and an additional quantity of rouge. She was evidently a little surprised and shocked, therefore, at finding the lithe, dashing ensign transformed into a corpulent old general, with a double chin; though it was a perfect picture to witness their salutations; the graciousness of her profound curtsy, and the air of the old school with which the general took off his hat, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... that was not ungraceful Jim flung wide the door. Indeed, Rose-Marie told herself, as she stepped into the Volsky flat, Jim was never ungraceful. There was something lithe and cat-like in his slightest movement, just as there was something feline in the expression of his eyes. Rose-Marie often felt like a small, helpless mouse when Jim was staring ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... lithe and savage swiftness, came between them. He swung his gun, hitting Bill full in the face. The man fell, limp and heavy, and he lay there, with a bloody gash across his brow. Kells stood over him a moment, slowly lowering the gun. Joan feared he ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... the tales the Boriquenos had told of the bright waters that gushed from the earth amid banks of flowers,—waters so sweet that who drank would drink again, and with every draught would throw off years and pain until at last he was a youth once more,—a youth with hot blood, sparkling eyes, lithe muscles; a youth who saw the world full of beauty and adventure. Ah, to be once more as he was when the princess beamed on him; to throw away his cares, his ails, his conscience, his regrets; to sing and dance, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... with a face somewhat of the type of Lord Derby's. There was Professor Huxley, young in years, dark, heavy-browed, alert and resolute, but not moulded after any high ideal; and there was Professor Tyndall, also young, lithe of limb, and nonchalant in manner. When his name was called he sat as if he had no concern in what was going on, and then rose with an easy smile, partly of modesty, but in ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... seemed, my thoughts flashed back to that lithe and buoyant figure, and then to the picture of it charred and scorched ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... so stately by, they all walked so gracefully, Balancing their bodies on lithe unstable hips, As if music moved them that swelled in their bosoms And was ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... skilful strokes she brought up in shallow water. There was a quick rush of lithe feet, the sound of sweet, high laughter, then a little, good-natured gurgle of protest from the golden-haired, blue-eyed girl curled up on the sand as she found herself being dragged into the water by a ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... dangling. Velvet head-dress, huge purse at girdle, gorgeous train, bare legs. And thus they came on, the citizen's wife strutting, and the maid gliding after, holding her mistress's train devoutly in both hands, and bending and winding her lithe body prettily enough to do it. Imagine (if not pressed for time) a bantam, with a guineahen stepping obsequious at ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... skull cap and a green scarf, like a scout scarf, loosely thrown about his neck. Even the rifle which he carried jauntily over his shoulder was green in color, so that he seemed to Tom to have that general hue which things assume when seen through green spectacles. He was lithe and agile, gliding through the bushes as if he were a part of them, and he came straight toward Tom, with a nimbleness which almost rivalled that of ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... lithe, sinewy, with a faint hint of rib and a wonderful bust; her brain was good, intuitive in its non-educated state, and subtle from inheritance; her ambition was superb, it knew no ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... Lithe and noiseless as a cat, Roy crept through the archway into outer darkness. It was hateful leaving Aruna; but rage at her hurt and the primitive instinct of pursuit were not to be denied. And she might have been killed. And ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... nor Burd so blithe Had driven them in this haste; But the old, old man, so lean and lithe, That afar behind us paced; So lean and lithe, with shoulder'd scythe, And a whetstone at ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... fires lighting up the picturesque huts, their dark figures relieved by their white and scarlet turbans and waist-cloth. The whole scene put us very much in mind of the old familiar pictures of India, the lithe figures of the natives looking like beautiful bronze statues, the rough country carts, drawn by buffaloes without harness, but dragging by their hump, and driven by black-skinned natives armed with a long goad. We went straight to the jetty, and found to our surprise ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... matter,—she would no more have committed the dreadful act than have exhibited herself to a public assembly in a badly fitting garment! Zenobia, I have often thought, was not quite simple in her death. She had seen pictures, I suppose, of drowned persons in lithe and graceful attitudes. And she deemed it well and decorous to die as so many village maidens have, wronged in their first love, and seeking peace in the bosom of the old familiar stream,—so familiar that they could not dread it,—where, in childhood, they used to ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was gone, she shut the door, listening until his heavy boots had thumped creaking down the rickety ladder leading to the frame-rooms. Then she climbed up on the high office-stool (climbed, I said, for she was a little, lithe thing) and went to work, opening the books, and copying from one to the other as steadily, monotonously, as if she had been used to it all her life. Here are the first pages: see how sharp the angles are of the blue and black ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the edge of the ancient terrace where broad-leaved clover grows in the broken urns. A girlish form, slender and lithe, swinging a great, old-fashioned straw hat, having a shawl wound crosswise over throat and waist, has stepped forth from the decaying old gate. She carries a little white bundle under her arm, and looks tentatively ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... closely. He was superlatively well-built, light, and lithe and strong; he was well-featured; his yellow eyes were very large, though, perhaps, not very expressive; take him altogether, he was a pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to find with him, beyond that he was of a dusky hue, and inclined to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hands above his head. Silently, but with the agility of cats, the four lean Colonials followed him. Six paces on, and under the shelter of a rock appear the forms of two men, asleep, and rolled in their blankets. It is not necessary to describe what followed. A leap forward by four lithe figures with shortened arms, a sinuous flash of steel, a sickening thud and gurgle, one choking wail, and all was over, and two farmer-soldiers had paid the extreme penalty for the betrayal of the trust their comrades had placed ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... like stars around the walls, and the chant was renewed with a passionate abandon. The figures hitched and sprang around the homely iron stove like lithe animals. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... The lithe limbed mulatto gave a hop on to the portico, and another bound to the soft grass of the lawn, whence she ran, like a deer, to meet our sea-loving friend, with the high shoulders, who was crossing towards the house at a far brisker pace than was ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... here," said the colonel, pointing out to the eastward where some lithe-limbed hounds were coursing over the prairie with Ralph on his fleet sorrel racing in pursuit. "Look at young McCrea out there where there are no telegraph poles to help you judge the distance. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... through their sheikhs. They have adopted the dress and habits of the fellahin, unlike their kinsmen the Bisharin and Hadendoa, who go practically naked. They are neither so fierce nor of so fine a physique as these latter. They are lithe and well built, but small: the average height is little more than 5 ft., except in the sheikh clan, who are obviously of Arab origin. Their complexion is more red than black, their features angular, noses straight ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the setting sun, Pete rhythmically bent and straightened over his saw. The tool sang with a hissing, ringing rhythm, and the young man drove it with a lithe, long swing of body, forward and back, forward and back, in alternate postures of untiring grace. The air was not cold. There was the cloudy softness premonitory of a spring storm; the sun glowed like a dying fire through ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... long, and neither was capable of harshness or rancour. Their endearing grace of manner made a pleasant warmth in any society which they entered; and since this gentleness was joined to a perpetual glow of enthusiasm the effect was triumphant. One's recollection was of something lithe, alert, eager, like a finely-bred greyhound." Those of us who were not personally acquainted with FRANCIS and RIVERSDALE GRENFELL will, after reading this Memoir and the Preface by their uncle, Field-Marshal Lord GRENFELL, seem to know them intimately. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... if you can," I said with mischievous defiance, springing off the veranda into the flower-garden. He accepted my challenge, and, being lithe as a cat, a tremendous scamper ensued. Round and round the flower-beds we ran. Uncle Jay-Jay's beard opened in a broad smile, which ended in a loud laugh. Everard Grey's coat-tails flew in the breeze he made, and his collar was too high for athletic purposes. I laughed too, and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... impressed with the sanctity of his office; but hardly had he got into the room, and greeted the Magian with much unction, than he pulled the white garment off over his head, rubbed from his cheeks the lines which gave him twenty added years, stretched his lithe limbs, and exclaimed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... time to time to batter wildly with his clinched fists at such sections of Sioux anatomy as he could reach; but, at range so close, his blows lacked both swing and steam, and fell harmless on sinewy back and lean, muscular flanks. Then he tried a Galway hitch and trip, but his lithe antagonist knew a trick worth ten of that. Kennedy tried many a time next day to satisfactorily account for it, but never with success. He found himself speedily on the broad of his back, gasping for breath with which to keep up his vocal defiance, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... communication of force from part to part, and also a studious expression of this throughout every visible line of the building. And, in like manner, the Greek and Egyptian ornament is either mere surface engraving, as if the face of the wall had been stamped with a seal, or its lines are flowing, lithe, and luxuriant; in either case, there is no expression of energy in framework of the ornament itself. But the Gothic ornament stands out in prickly independence, and frosty fortitude, jutting into crockets, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... with myself, whereby I admit that at sight of that figure I had experienced a sensation which was compounded not only of alarm and curiosity but also of some other emotion which even now I find it hard to define. Instantly I knew that the lithe shape, glimpsed but instantaneously, was that of no chance pedestrian—was indeed that of no ordinary being. At the same moment I heard again, unmistakably, ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... every look and motion of that young man's fine eyes and lithe body. He would have bought wings at any price had that been possible; but, none being yet in the market, he made the most of his wheel—a fifty-eight inch one, by the way, for the young man's legs were long, as well ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... as a man of great refinement—a gentleman, in fact," Phrida said. "I recollect him perfectly: tall, rather thin, with a pointed, grey beard, a long, oval face, and thinnish, grey hair. A very lithe, erect man, whose polite, elegant manner was that of a diplomat, and in whose dark eyes was an expression of constant merriment and good humour. He spoke with a slight ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... next moment Jim stood on the deck—a tall strapping young seaman of twenty or thereabouts—a second edition of his father, but more active and lithe in his motions. ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... pat it wunst," sighed the hereditary enemy, with a lithe writhing of her thin little anatomy in the anguish of ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... wrathful, sprang lightly from his seat, and ere Kenric could well understand his intention he had caught hold of the youth and gripped him by his sword hand. He wreathed his other strong arm round the lad's lithe body. Long he wrestled with him, but at last he drew him down by main force with his back across his thigh and his right hand set hard at his throat. With his left hand he again gripped Kenric's sword hand and tried to wrest the weapon from his grasp. But Kenric's wrist was of ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... thou hast dipped thy finger-tips; Just, just beyond, forever burn Gleams of a grace without return; Upon thy shade I plant my foot, And through my frame strange raptures shoot; All of thee but thyself I grasp; I seem to fold thy luring shape, And vague air to my bosom clasp, Thou lithe, perpetual Escape! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... stand in some gallery that brings together all the best masters. Standing beside the Elgin marbles in the British Museum, the sculptor must bathe and soak himself in the Greek ideal and spirit, until the Greek thought throbs in his brain, and he feels the Greek enthusiasm for strength in round, lithe arms, and limbs made ready ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... knowing what to believe, and prepared to set the whole village down as a lot of gossips who seemed to mind everything but its own business. And, perhaps, Lord Littimer might come riding through on his big black horse, small, lithe, brown as mahogany, and with an eye piercing as a diamond-drill. One day he looked almost boyishly young, there would be a smile on his tanned face. And then another day he would be bent in the saddle, huddled up, wizened, an old, old man, crushed with the weight ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... with the rifle, landing with both feet on Furneaux's back, and thus completing the little man's discomfiture. By that time the two policemen were nearly upon him, but he was lithe and fierce as a cobra, and had seized the rifle again before they could close with him. Jabbing the nearer adversary with the muzzle, he smashed a lamp and sent its owner sprawling backward. Then, swinging the weapon, he aimed a murderous ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... in the soft robes as the car leapt and fled like a lithe gray cat through the storm. Her thoughts were busy with the new problem; these followers were Wiley's men, of course. He had boasted that he would have more able tools to aid him in the future than Vernon had proved. Where ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... iron which with characteristic ferocity they apply to every male child that is born among them, drawing blood from its cheeks before it is allowed its first taste of milk. They are little in stature, but lithe and active in their motions, and especially skilful in riding, broad-shouldered, good at the use of the bow and arrows, with sinewy necks, and always holding their heads high in their pride. To sum up, these beings under the form of man hide the ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... pleasure, and—for they had gone back to the lighted room now—Hetty presently found herself seated face to face with the stranger. He was a tall, well-favoured man, slender, and lithe in movement, with dark eyes and hair, and a slightly sallow face that suggested that he was from the South. It also seemed fitting that he was immaculately dressed, for there was a curious gracefulness about him that still had in it a trace ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... he was equal in force to the sun. With him was La Robe Noire, of grave aspect and few words, mighty in stature and shoulder power. There were five or six others, whose names in the clangor of voices I did not hear. Of these, one was a tall, lithe, swift-moving man, whose cunning eyes seemed to gleam with the malice of a serpent. This canoeman silently twisted into sleeping posture directly ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the house of the baroness, where he was evidently expected, for the servant asked his name and immediately ushered him into her presence. She was one of those lithe, dark women of good race, that are to be met with all over the world, and she has broken many a heart. But she was not like a snake at all, as Nino had thought at first. She was simply a very fine lady ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... took the twenty-five dollars eagerly and vanished into obscurity. We passed to the wild side of the Fraser and entered upon a long and intimate study of the Blue Rat. He shucked out of the log stable a smooth, round, lithe-bodied little cayuse of a blue-gray color. He looked like a child's toy, but seemed sturdy and of good condition. His foretop was "banged," and he had the air of a mischievous, resolute boy. His eyes were big and black, and he ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... seemed only to show off all the hitherto hidden strength and vigour of the powerful limbs below; indeed it almost seemed that with his elegant garments he had laid aside his lassitude also and taken on a new air of resolution, for his eyes were sleepy no longer, and his every gesture was lithe and quick. So great was the change that Spike stared speechless, and Mr. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... was warm and young; Mount Davidson's side was golden with sunflowers. On the long front piazza Mr. Madigan's canaries, in their mammoth cage, were like to burst their throats for joy in the promise of summer. Irene, every lithe muscle a-play, was hanging by her knees on the swinging-bar, her tawny hair sweeping the woodshed floor as ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Shotover, there was not a good feature in her face, and even to a casual glance it might have suggested a measure of meanness. But a bright complexion, and the youthful charm which vanishes with youth, are pleasant in their season. Her figure was lithe, and in general she had a look of fun; but at the moment heat and impatience clouded ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... time, and, presently, the great range of lofty hills called, to our right, the Moose Watchi, and to our left, the Tuskanatchi—the Moose and Raspberry Mountains—loomed in the distance. Here, and when only a few miles from the lake, a York boat came tearing down stream full of lithe, young half-breed trackers—our long-expected assistants from the Hudson's Bay Company's post, as we would have welcomed much more warmly had they come sooner, for we had little but the lake now to ascend, up which a fair breeze would carry ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... superior mind to free itself from the trammels with which foolish opinion has enswathed it—not one of these celebrated persons who did not in his secret soul condemn the folly to which he lent himself. The bonds of reason, though iron-strong, are easily burst through; but those of folly, though lithe and frail as the rushes by a stream, defy the stoutest heart to snap them asunder. Colonel Thomas, an officer in the Guards, who was killed in a duel, added the following clause to his will the night before he died:—"In the first place, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... to the most elegant socks and tan shoes which adorned his feet. His walk was British, his stride the active, elastic, athletic stride of one of our young fellows; and the poise of his head, the erectness of his lithe figure, a symbol of what one is accustomed to in Britons wherever they are met. That one gathered from a mere casual glance; though a second glance—a more penetrating one, we will say, one with a trifle more curiosity thrown into it—would have discovered ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... in with Tommy, a lithe, hard-looking fellow in a blue suit, walked crisply across the room, and pulling out a pair of light hand-cuffs snapped them round von Bruenig's wrists. He then performed a similar service for the ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... brushed the gun wheels; long stretches of the road were grass-grown. Through the woods to the right, by paths nearer yet to the far-flung Federal front, paced ten guardian squadrons. All went silently, all went swiftly. In the Confederate service there were no automata. These thousands of lithe, bronzed, bright-eyed, tattered men knew that something, something, something was being done! Something important that they must all help Old Jack with. Forbidden to talk, they speculated inwardly. "South by west. 'T isn't a Thoroughfare Gap march. They're ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... water, trolling for pickerel or angling for perch, almost any day in the year, excepting when the waters were icebound in winter."[120] The commodore was of quite imposing appearance, handsome alike in form and figure, straight as an arrow, and lithe as an Indian, with silvery locks that hung gracefully down upon his shoulders. His method of fishing was fascinating to watch. Standing erect in his boat, the commodore would paddle from the outlet of the lake to some inviting patch of weeds, and there, in quite ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... vagrant blood in her and the heritage compounded of many races, Jees Uck developed a wonderful young beauty. Bizarre, perhaps, it was, and Oriental enough to puzzle any passing ethnologist. A lithe and slender grace characterized her. Beyond a quickened lilt to the imagination, the contribution of the Celt was in no wise apparent. It might possibly have put the warm blood under her skin, which made her face less swart and her body fairer; but that, in turn, might have come from Shpack, the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... girl," added Quair, looking at the lithe, modeled figure, and then half turning to include the model, who had seated herself on the lounge, and was now gazing with interest at the composition sketched in by Drene for the facade of the ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... between us. For a moment we stared at each other, I reflecting that she really was very pretty with her delicately-shaped features, her fresh, healthy-looking complexion, her long dark eyelashes and her lithe and charming figure. What she reflected about me I don't know, probably nothing half so complimentary. Suddenly, however, her large greyish eyes grew troubled and a look of alarm ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... stared at him and he at the stranger, while Mademoiselle Claire, with eyes which on a sudden became keen and intent, seemed to forget herself in gazing on both. The new-comer was taller than the Vicomte and of about the same age; a thin, lithe man, with restless eyes and dark, tumbled hair. He scanned the Vicomte with at least as much disfavour as the latter, taken by surprise, spent on him; and he ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman |
