"Briskness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... between the trees was paler, the black was blacker, as the two officers returned across the fields; to the hush of afternoon had succeeded the briskness of evening. Birds were awake and a breeze rustled in the branches; and Captain Hahn ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... about the whole scene was its extraordinary animation and briskness. All the folk round the fires and outside of them moved about quickly and with the same kind of liveliness which might animate a camp of more natural people at the rising of the sun. It was as though they had just got up full of vigour to commence their daily, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... of infantry and cavalry, and saluted the colours as he passed, BONAPARTE (attended by all his retinue, including a favourite Mamaluk whom he brought from Egypt), took a central position, when the different corps successively filed off before him with most extraordinary briskness; the corps composing the consular guard preceded those of the garrison and all the others: on inquiry, however, I find, that this ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... no time just then to inquire what the Speaking Oak had said. But the briskness of her tone encouraged the young man; and, besides, he had never in his life felt so vigorous and mighty as since taking this old woman on his back. Instead of being exhausted he gathered strength as he went ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... and a half years ago a couple of cottages in this locality were "thrown into one," and arranged so as to moderately accommodate those caring about religion, and willing to have it in a "good old Methodist" style. There was considerable briskness of trade hereabouts at that time, ships were made in the adjoining yards, the bubble of speculation was being strongly blown, large numbers of strong-armed men, caring more for ale in gallon jugs than either virtue in tracts or piety in sermons, resided in the district, the population ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... is it?" to his man in a hearty kind of way, and hoisted himself out of his chair with unusual briskness. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... so lacking in his old definite briskness where their holidays were concerned, would daunt Rachael with a sense of utter forlornness. Sometimes she offered a plan, but it was invariably rejected. There were friends who would have been delighted at an unexpected ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... The briskness of our friendships depends on the time when—the place where. To men in prison a familiar face is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... Jean, assuming an air of briskness the confusion of her face belied. "Come away in, I am proud to ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... are reading to the lasting detriment of their memories and powers of observation and reflection, stuffing themselves with type, as it were? Nearly every observant librarian knows of such cases. Are there not days when the shining of the sun, the briskness of the air, the greenness of the turf and of the trees, should have their invitation seconded by the librarian, and the child be persuaded AWAY from the library instead of TO it? We are supposed to contribute with our books toward the sound mind, but ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... that Barbara Jerome should have a large dog, for both in mind and body she was on the large scale herself. She had a pleasant, high-coloured face, was very tall, enormously stout, and moved with great briskness and vigour. She had something to say on any subject that came on the board; and, what was less usual in these days of universal knowledge, there was invariably some point in what she said. She had, in the ordinary sense of the word, no manners ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... semi-military driver, pull up at the door, and the flutter of a veil as the vehicle passed through the entrance; and this was the only glimpse I ever caught of the little lady that dingy office called mistress. There was, however, a certain briskness in the movement of the clerks, and a glow of pleasure on their faces, that always denoted a visit; and very frequent those visits were. Without in any way obstructing it, her pretty interest seemed to throw a halo around the dull routine of trade; and, if there was any unpleasantness, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... the sentence suddenly and laid the flowers down upon his table with a briskness born of sudden interest. His eye had fallen upon the letter of which Dollops had spoken. It was lying face upward upon the table, so that he could see the clear, fine, characterful hand in which it was written and could read clearly ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... All that he can do is to take a great part of his attitudes from the serious stile, but to give them another turn and air in the composition; that he may avoid confounding the two different stiles of serious and half-serious. For this last, it is impossible to have too much agility and briskness. ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... about it. Why was he so irritable to-day? Was he going to develop nerves at the finish? Yes, it was evident, the warm air of the south did not suit him, he had lost his briskness, looked so tired. There was nothing for it, her husband was more to her than her picture, she would leave ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... rockery, in whose mossy crannies errant trickles of water might lose themselves, and perhaps fertilize exotic flora yet unborn. At this moment I espied a wheelbarrow in the distance, and went for it with that purposeful briskness, which may sometimes be used in fatigues of this sort to disguise your real intentions. For it is of the greatest importance in a fatigue to have an implement; it is the outward symbol of labour; if observation ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... can," Tom said with continued briskness. "It interests me. I'll do my best. And I want you to get your ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... George Moore, for an interval the critic of the Speaker, now the London Nation, because he could and did. I can remember him at an Academy Press View making the interminable round with a business-like briskness until, perhaps in the first hour and the last room, he would come upon the painting that gave him the peg for his eloquence, make an elaborate study of it, tell us his task was finished, and hurry off exultant. But envy him as I might, I couldn't borrow ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... with interest as the door of the private parlour was thrown open, and a tall, handsome young woman burst in with a briskness of movement which betokened unusual energy and vivacity. He got an impression of the old estate agent's daughter in one glance, and wondered how Chatfield came to have such a good-looking girl as his progeny. The impression was of dark, sparkling eyes, a mass of darker, highly-burnished hair, ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... steps with Mrs. Adair, and left Ethne standing upon the terrace. The last scene of pretence had been acted out, the months of tension and surveillance had come to an end, and both were thankful for their release. Durrance showed that he was glad even in the briskness of his walk, as he crossed the lawn at Mrs. Adair's side. She, however, lagged, and when she spoke it was ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... winter Thea got no city consciousness. Chicago was simply a wilderness through which one had to find one's way. She felt no interest in the general briskness and zest of the crowds. The crash and scramble of that big, rich, appetent Western city she did not take in at all, except to notice that the noise of the drays and street-cars tired her. The brilliant window displays, the splendid furs and stuffs, the ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... An unwonted briskness—portentous apparently of coming speech—did certainly at that moment enliven the curate's manner. He jerked his head from side to side like a bird; he cleared his throat, and clasped his hands, and looked with a gentle interest at the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... was sitting in her favourite sunny corner of the kitchen and Clemantiny was flying around with double briskness. The latter's thin lips were tightly set and disapproval was writ large in every flutter ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... her neighbor's ill-temper. But Miss Thornton, delicately approached, had proved so ungracious and so uncommunicative, that Miss Murray had retired into herself, and attacked her work with unusual briskness. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... I rode through a village which lies near to the city on the eastern side, there approached me with busy face and earnest gestures a personage in the Turkish dress. His long flowing beard gave him rather a majestic look, but his briskness of manner, and his visible anxiety to accost me, seemed strange in an Oriental. The man in fact was French, or of French origin, and his object was to warn me of the plague, and prevent me from ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... man did not again wander into visions. He was all briskness as he served her bacon and eggs, took a plate of them to Mr. Boltwood in the Gomez, gouged into his own. Having herself scoured the tin plates, Claire was not repulsed by their naked tinniness; and the coffee in the broken-handled china cup was tolerable. Milt drank from the top of ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... stopped at this shop to be shaved by the head barber. The barbers were negroes, he was their great man, and it was their habit to give him a "reception," his entrance being always the signal for a flurry of jocular hospitality, followed by general excesses of briskness and gaiety. But it was not ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... reflected light from him; or, to use another simile, had been spattered upon her by the full stream which the Doctor poured into the vessel of the boy's intellect. So that she had even some knowledge of the rudiments of Latin, and geometry, and algebra; inaccurate enough, but yet with such a briskness that she was sometimes able to assist Ned in studies in which he was far more deeply grounded than herself. All this, however, was more by sympathy than by any natural taste for such things; being kindly, and sympathetic, and impressible, she ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you see that woman stepping briskly about the house, a light in her eye, a flush on her cheek, vivacity in her motions. She is "living on excitement;" "it is ambition which keeps her up." Her husband, coming in to his dinner, takes her briskness and vivacity as matters of course, regarding her, probably, as a woman who has nothing to do but to stay in the house all day. He has no more idea of the condition of that woman than her ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... Noyes, the author of this book, is an American all over. He has the rapidity and eagerness of mind that the champagny atmosphere of our northern hills gives to those who are stout enough not to be wilted by our hot summers. For briskness, thriftiness, energy, and alacrity, it is hard to find his match. He has made a book of travels, and will make a hundred, unless somebody finds him a place at home where he will have an indefinite number ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... his customary spirit; he moved with his customary briskness—he had become quite himself again, since I had ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... in such a way that they did not interfere with each other. Of these applicants none pleased me. One of them was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, rather spare person, whose youthful energies had been so improved by years that I was sure her briskness of action, her promptness of speech, and her evident anxiety to get to work and to keep at it would ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... interlocutor with a certain genial fury of inspection. He seemed to be in a state of some excitement; he spoke volubly and almost boisterously, and his voice was full-toned and powerful, though pleasant to the ear. He turned himself, as he spoke, with a burly briskness, from one side to another, addressing himself first to this auditor and then to that, his words bursting forth from beneath his white moustache with such an impetus of hearty breath that it seemed as if all opposing ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... privileged from exceptions; and I am mistaken if, when it is grown up and by experience and discipline brought to savor something like man, if in the same instant that beauty does not fade, its liveliness decay, its pleasantness grow flat, and its briskness fail. And by how much the further it runs from me, by so much the less it lives, till it comes to the burden of old age, not only hateful to others, but to itself also. Which also were altogether insupportable did not I pity its condition, in being present with it, and, as the poets' gods ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... twice with considerable energy ere he returned, cursing the absent Antonio in language that would have outmatched the Italian's own. Then, having relieved his feelings, he abruptly laughed to himself and pursued his errand with business-like briskness. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... fragrant nights, the tender skies, the plentiful rains of the early season. The singing of birds is in it, and the health and frolic of lusty Nature. It is the product of liquid May touched by the June sun. It has the tartness, the briskness, the unruliness of spring, and the aroma and intensity ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... wrote, none but Itself should read; Much, too, It chatter'd of dramatic laws, Misjudging critics, and misplaced applause; 160 Then, with a self-complacent, jutting air, It smiled, It smirk'd, It wriggled to the chair; And, with an awkward briskness not Its own, Looking around, and perking on the throne, Triumphant seem'd; when that strange savage dame, Known but to few, or only known by name, Plain Common-Sense appear'd, by Nature there Appointed, with plain Truth, to ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... opened and closed all the drawers of his desk as though seeking something—he found it where he had left it, hanging on a peg behind the door, and put it on—and said with great determination and briskness: ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... grievances. I think the shots must have stimulated his nerve centres, for he had abandoned the languid drawl with which, in happier moments, he was wont to comment on life's happenings, and was dealing with the situation with a staccato briskness. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... great briskness.] Your present need is a good shaking.... I seriously mean that. You get to attach importance to these shades of emotion. A slight physical shock would settle them all. That's why I asked you to kiss ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... Charles," said he cordially, stepping into the room with all the boyish briskness for which he was famous, "I trust that you find yourself a little better. Almost ready for harness, eh? We miss you sadly, both in the House and in the Council. Quite a storm brewing over this Grecian business. The Times took ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... distant siege, nor the inclemency of winter, can dislodge the Roman army from a city once invested, and that they know no other termination of war than victory, and that they carry on wars not more by briskness than by perseverance; which is necessary no doubt in every kind of war, but more especially in besieging cities; most of which, impregnable both by their works and by natural situation, time itself overpowers and reduces by famine and thirst; as it will reduce Veii, unless the tribunes of the ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... comb and brush congenially as to the castinets, and flourishing them apparently with almost equal satisfaction. There is, too, a smooth tact about them in this employment, with a marvelous, noiseless, gliding briskness, not ungraceful in its way, singularly pleasing to behold, and still more so to be the manipulated subject of. And above all is the great gift of good-humor. Not the mere grin or laugh is here meant. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... seventh repetition than on the first. After an evening, when Gillian had gone to a musical party with Aunt Ada, and Fergus did his lessons under Aunt Jane's superintendence, he utterly cast off his sister's aid. There was something in Miss Mohun's briskness that he found inspiring, and she put in apt words or illustrations, instead of only rousing herself from a book to listen, prompt, and sigh. He found that he did his tasks more thoroughly in half the time, and rose in his class; and busy as his aunt was, she made the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nervous temperament, an eye sharp to detect failings or foolishness, an admirer of briskness and vivacity, why did she welcome John Duck, that incarnation of stolidity and slowness, that enormous mountain of a man? Because extremes meet? No, since she was always complaining of Iden's dull, motionless life; so it was not ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... Epimenides sleeps in these times: and yet, may not many a man, if of due opacity and levity, act the same miracle in a natural way; we mean, with his eyes open? Eyes has he, but he sees not, except what is under his nose. With a sparkling briskness of glance, as if he not only saw but saw through, such a one goes whisking, assiduous, in his circle of officialities; not dreaming but that it is the whole world: as, indeed, where your vision terminates, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... wore airs of cheerful briskness that deceived the public. No one could have thought that Amos was fearing his undoubtedly crazed clerk might become uncontrollable at any moment, or that the clerk was mentally parting from Amos forever in a scene of tense dramatic value in which his few dignified ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... visits to his daughter's sick-room. In spite of her head, she could not help noticing something peculiar in his manner. He did not talk, because conversation was forbidden during these attacks, but there was an increased briskness in his eyes and step as he approached her, and, she fancied, more of anxious care in his tone when he spoke. She was sure he had ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... themselves. My men belonged to the region we were in, and I learned from them that the nearest European dwelt only eight miles distant. I bargained with them to take me to his bungalow. The unexpected wages which they were promised being liberal, they trotted off with unwonted briskness. In due course the bungalow loomed in sight, and as I approached it a burly figure, in shirt-sleeves and with arms akimbo, appeared in the verandah, his eyes turned in the direction of his unlooked-for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... legs. A man stood at the flap entrance of each, inviting people to enter and see these wonders of nature for a moderate sum. Near by was the lemonade wagon, whose proprietor was handing out glasses of his fluid with a briskness that showed that ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... there was blowing, that was sufficient after-canvas for her to carry with advantage. She ceased firing. "Hurrah! she is going to strike," we exclaimed; but the wreck of the maintop-mast was quickly cleared away, and she commenced again with greater briskness than ever. In return, the corvette plied her fast and furiously with shot, which must have told pretty severely among her people on deck, though, of course, we could not see the damage which was done. The brig was within ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... Fair were of a different character. The audiences were composed of leading men from nearly all the counties of the State. Though the discussion of party questions had been going on all summer with more or less briskness, yet such was the general confusion in politics that many honest and intelligent voters and even leaders were still undecided in their opinions. The fair continued nearly a week. Douglas made a speech on the first day, Tuesday, October 3. Lincoln ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... now M Street was different—full of marketers and of briskness. The old bridge was crowded. As her car swooped up the hills and skirted the curves to Polly Widdicombe's she began to be afraid again. But she was committed to the adventure and she was eager for the worst of it. She found the house without ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... century which had seen the plant of individualism flower so wonderfully was setting in a sky orange with coming storms. Rumours of war added to the briskness of a London turbulent at the close of the summer holidays. And the streets to Jolyon, who was not often up in town, had a feverish look, due to these new motorcars and cabs, of which he disapproved aesthetically. He counted these vehicles from his hansom, and made the proportion ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... muscular. There was nothing mean or secretive about him. He was wonderfully hopeful, but had not the stuff to push his way into wealth. He was tall, slim, and pale; had a languor which showed itself even in his briskness; was most amiable, cheerful, and communicative. He called Pip "Handel," because Pip had been a blacksmith, and Handel composed a piece of music entitled The Harmonious Blacksmith. Pip helped him to a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... veranda, Frederick watched a man coming up the driveway. By the roll of the sea in his walk, Frederick could guess for whom the stranger came. The face was swarthy with sun and wrinkled with age that was given the lie by the briskness of his movements and the alertness in the keen black eyes. In the lobe of each ear was ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... afternoons, flitted in bareheaded loveliness from door to door, have changed with the changing times. The loveliness is perhaps more striking, less distinctive; with the flower-like heads have passed the old grace and the old dependence, and the undulatory walk has quickened into buoyant briskness. It is all modern—as modern as the red brick walls that are building where a quaint ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... willing; it depends upon you gaily, as a friend may do without making any depressing show of helplessness; neither, on the other hand, is it apt to set you at naught or charge you with a make-believe. It accompanies, it almost anticipates; it lags when you are brisk, just so much as to give your briskness good reason, and to justify you if you should take to still more nimble heels. All your haste, moreover, does but waken ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... amenities are over, Excellenz," she said with the briskness she had picked up from her American friends, "let us come to the point. I infer you did not take a day's journey and put up with this abominable hotel to tell me that you are forming a Federation of Austria and the South German States. You were sometimes ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... movement was only a diversion under cover of which we might have a chance to escape, but it was being executed with so much briskness and spirit that Bothwell could ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... streets echoed with the cries of paper-boys. The nurses whispered together excitedly in their leisure moments; the doctors seemed to acquire an added briskness. Once or twice she heard the measured tramp of feet in the streets below, as a regiment was moved from ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... "There was not one of them, however, that came forward to help us—I am excepting, you understand, your father, Freme, and Holcomb. I owe them a debt of gratitude which I can never repay. Why have you come, Dinsmore?" he added, turning abruptly, with something of the briskness of ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... in passing, that it is pleasant to see the rapid spread of clubs for the latter game, which a few years since was practised only by a few transplanted Englishmen and Scotchmen; and it is pleasant also to observe the twin growth of our indigenous American game of base-ball, whose briskness and unceasing activity are perhaps more congenial, after all, to our national character, than the comparative deliberation of cricket. Football, bating its roughness, is the most glorious of all games to those whose animal life is sufficiently vigorous to enjoy it. Skating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the angler with his arched rod and sensitive winch to meet wile with wile, and determination with a firmness of which gentleness is the warp and woof. While it lasts, and when the fish are in a sporting humour, there is nothing more exciting than sea-trout angling. Perhaps for briskness of sport one ought to bracket with it the Mayfly carnival of the non-tidal trout streams in the generally hot days of early June, when the English meadows are in all their glory, and the fish for a few days cast shyness to the green and grey drakes and run a fatal ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... except our own despair. But the problem which is difficult is how to practise a real fulness of life, and yet to keep a certain detachment, how to realise that what we do is small and petty enough, but that the greatness lies in our energy and briskness of action; we should try to be interested in life as we are interested in a game, not believing too much in the importance of it, but yet intensely concerned at the moment in playing it as well and skilfully as possible. The happiest people of all are those who can ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wish to succeed with Alida, Patroon, you must put more briskness into the adventure. The girl has a cross of the Frenchman in her temper, and none of your deliberations and taciturnities will gain the day. This visit to the Lust in Rust is Cupid's own handywork, and I hope ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... foil of his so very widely known, that third parties took it up, and handled it on some occasions with considerable briskness. It was one of the most exasperating attributes of Bounderby, that he not only sang his own praises but stimulated other men to sing them. There was a moral infection of clap-trap in him. Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, started up at dinners in Coketown, and boasted, in quite a rampant ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... the corral with her usual briskness, and, walking deliberately past him, turned up an empty box in a far corner and sat down upon it, and called to him. From the instant of her entrance he had held himself back, but when she called him he rushed eagerly ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... have noticed a nervous quickness in his movements, and a certain shrillness in his voice, but the sitter gave no heed to these tokens, which he would have regarded as of no importance had he seen them. The talk was at first rather rambling, and was not kept up with much briskness on either side. Fenton, indeed, was so absorbed in the task which lay before him that he hardly followed the other's remarks, and he suddenly became aware that he had lost the thread of conversation altogether, so that he could not possibly imagine ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... were distributed along the gun and berth-decks, with similar orders; and, to crown all, several carronade guns were unshipped from their carriages, and swung in their breechings from the beams of the main-deck, so as to impart a sort of vibratory briskness and oscillating ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... In the morning these drinks remove the last traces of sleepiness and in the evening when we still have intellectual tasks to dispose of they aid in keeping us awake." Their use induces a greater briskness and clearness of thought, after which secondary fatigue is either entirely ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... tall, active man, very well dressed, with black, thick-curling hair and keen, blue eyes. He seemed under thirty years of age, but had the self-confident manner of a man of the world, and a great briskness of demeanor and speech. He sat down and began to tell of his experiences; he had been all over the world, and knew everything about the world's affairs, even the secrets of courts and the coming movements of international ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... attendance on these works of art was in all respects, shabbiness excepted, unlike the former personage. His whole appearance and manner denoted briskness. Though threadbare, he expressed to the crowd that poverty had not subdued his spirit, or tinged with any sense of shame this honest effort to turn his talents to some account. The writing which formed a part of his composition was conceived in a similarly cheerful tone. It breathed the following ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the vast privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you with one fixed particular subject or expression, but with a thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You may always be looking at a natural ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that gallant officer Sir Samuel Hood, received it next, and stood after them. At nine the enemy began to cannonade my van, which was returned with the greatest briskness. The baffling winds did not permit part of the centre division to get into action with the enemy's rear till half-past eleven; and then only the ship next me in line of battle, &c. The enemy's cannonade ceased upon my rear's approach, but not before they had done considerable ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... turn, as they became more numerous than the townsmen, influenced them also; so that the difference between town and country grew less and less; and it was indeed this world of the country vivified by the thought and briskness of town- bred folk which has produced that happy and leisurely but eager life of which you have had a first taste. Again I say, many blunders were made, but we have had time to set them right. Much was left for the men of my earlier life ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... self-satisfaction and repose which centuries of age may bestow, the spirit of life itself is the aspiration for change. Ambition itself only means the insistence on change. Each day is to be better than yesterday fuller of plans, of briskness, of initiative. Each to-day demands of to-morrow new men, new minds, new work. A to-day which has not launched new ships, explored new countries, constructed new buildings, added stories to old ones, may consider itself a failure, unworthy even of being consigned to the limbo of respectable yesterdays. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... at the next public meeting of the section, applauded vigorously when the President referred to the need of more briskness in France and England and asked for a private interview after the meeting was over. In a few well-chosen words he offered his services to run messages over the frontier. Off his platform the President was quite ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... farewell reception given by the officers and the C.P.O.'s to the men departing after their twenty-one days in Probation, so the first thing I did when I went in was to shake hands with an Ensign, who I thought was receiving. He got rid of my hand with the same briskness that one removes a live coal from one's person. The whole proceeding struck me as being a sort of charity bazaar. People were wandering around from booth to booth, in a pleasant sociable manner, passing a word here and sitting down there in the easiest-going way imaginable. Leaving the ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... constant tenor of virtue;—yea, even the gods themselves, when they engage in human actions, are not represented as free from passions and errors;—lest, for the want of some difficulties and cross passages, their poems should be destitute of that briskness which is requisite to move and astonish ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the side into the first cutter, which pulled away towards the ship. The gig immediately took her place, and the captain stepped into her. The cutter reached the Young America first, and the angry professor ran up the ladder with unwonted briskness. The principal was standing on the quarter, waiting to see the captain of the Josephine, for he was anxious to learn whether she had sustained any damage or lost any one overboard in the fierce storm. He knew that nothing but the most skilful seamanship could ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... (which encouraged confident hopes of a still further addition to the house of Spruggins at no remote period), increased the general prepossession in his favour. The other candidates, Bung alone excepted, resigned in despair. The day of election was fixed; and the canvass proceeded with briskness ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... he simply did not mention it and as it was known to have been communicated to him this represented effectively the policy of the closed door. He found himself even oftener in East Elgin, walking about on his pastoral errands with a fierce briskness of aspect and a sharp inquiring eye, before which one might say the proposition slunk away. Meanwhile, the Methodists who, it seemed, could tolerate decentralization, or anything short of round dances, opened a chapel with a cheerful sociable, and popularized the practice of backsliding ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a note and changed to his dinner jacket he rejoined them in the drawing-room. Barbara held out her hand to Letty, with a briskness indicating relief. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... remember the scarcity of water in these regions. In fact, the rainfall, instead of washing the surface and collecting in streams, sinks into the fissured chalk and percolates through it. When this formation is suitably tapped, we obtain water of exceeding briskness and purity. A large glass globe, filled with the water of a well near Tring, shows itself to be wonderfully free from mechanical impurity. Indeed, it stands to reason that water wholly withdrawn from surface contamination, and percolating through so clean a substance, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... if in embarrassment over an admission so at variance with the tenets of a lifetime. Then he spoke with sudden briskness: ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... a time in London, In the days of the Lyceum, Ages ere keen Arnold let it To the dreadful Northern Wizard, Ages ere the buoyant Mathews Tripp'd upon its boards in briskness— I remember, I remember How a scribe, with pen chivalrous, Tried to save these Indian stories From the fate of chill oblivion. Out came sundry comic Indians Of the tribe of Kut-an-hack-um. With their Chief, the clean Efmatthews, With the growling Downy Beaver, With the valiant ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... factory began, the employers very soon detected that it was running below its possible output. There was a curious lack of briskness in the work—a curious constraint among the new workers. Yet the employers were certain that the women were keen, and their labour potentially efficient. They put their heads together, and posted up a notice in the factory to the effect that whatever might be the increase ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I'll call up and ask when it is expected that he can see visitors," announced Fogg, with business briskness. "I wish Franklin had been here ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... apprehension that my spirits would sink. We bade adieu to each other affectionately in the carriage. When he had got down upon the foot-pavement, he called out, 'Fare you well;' and without looking back, sprung away with a kind of pathetick briskness, if I may use that expression, which seemed to indicate a struggle to conceal uneasiness, and impressed me with a foreboding of our ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... said, with a tinge of her old-time briskness. "You just keep breathing away like a steam engine, and I ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the State capital shortly after four in the morning. He dozed in his seat, the grateful breath of the summer night fanning his face through the screen. The Duke found him there, appearing as he had departed, his coat on his arm, his collar in his hand. He was full of the briskness of the dawn in spite of his ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... very engaging about our hero. He was not only good-looking, and frank in aspect, but he had that appearance of briskness and intellect which belongs to an embryo rogue. Mr. Augustus Tomlinson professed the greatest regard for him,—asked him if he could box, made him put on a pair of gloves, and very condescendingly knocked him down three times successively. Next he played ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to shoot that big brown collie of yours," explained Wefers, with businesslike briskness. "And I'm asking if he's showed any signs of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... and has lately been revived in Kent, though, in both these counties, much of the fruit used in cider-making is imported from the west country and some from the continent. Speaking generally, the cider of Herefordshire is distinguished for its lightness and briskness, that of Somerset for its strength, and that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... with an urbane briskness which, he hoped, would conceal his nervousness and delight in dining out. For he was one of the lonely men in New York. He had dined out four times ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... ideas, as it is with matters of feeling. The mind can rust as well as the body if it is not rubbed up in Paris; but the thing on which provincialism most sets its stamp is gesture, gait, and movement; these soon lose the briskness which Paris constantly keeps alive. The provincial is used to walk and move in a world devoid of accident or change, there is nothing to be avoided; so in Paris she walks on as raw recruits do, never remembering that there may be hindrances, for there ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Then, with a sudden briskness: "Let the Citizen La Boulaye not go forth until I return," he bade the gaoler; and to Caron he said: "You will have the goodness ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... wife had come to the train, delighted to welcome him to their home. As soon as he saw them, Joseph Mouradour jumped from the train with a briskness which increased their satisfaction. He shook their hands, congratulated them, overwhelmed ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... very few men like—him." Brigit took a sock out of the basket and looked at it absently. There was a short silence, during which Felicite did not speak, but she was watching her visitor in the glass. Then she said suddenly, with a certain briskness in her voice, "Shall I tell you about him? About my husband, you know, not about the ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... Bertheroy put in an appearance. Although he was sixty-eight, he showed as much briskness and sprightliness as any young sawbones calling in a friendly way to perform a little operation. He had brought an instrument case, some linen bands and some lint. However, he became angry on finding the injured man nervous, flushed and hot ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... himself, because, as he said, he liked not only to talk to a sensible man but also to hear what a sensible man had to say. He never stood still for a moment, but kept "bobbing around" with the effervescent briskness of a bee, at one time roosting at the top of the ladder, at another peering through the floor light, now to the right, then to the left, always humming scraps from the Opera Bouffe, but never changing the air. In the small space which was then ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... 18th, at nine in the morning only, he quitted his cantonments to march to Wavres: when he reached Walhain, he heard the cannonading at Mont St. Jean. Its continually increasing briskness left no doubt, that it was an extremely serious affair. General Excelmans proposed, to march to the guns by the right bank of the Dyle. "Do you not feel," said he to the marshal, "that the firing ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... demand to be made upon me. You will have heard from William all that was to be heard of our hopes and of our disappointments, and you will know likewise from him that our stock of those articles is not yet exhausted, although the briskness of the market is a little affected by the absence of the King. The Berlin reviews being over, he has begun a military progress, which will carry him through Brunswick, Minden and Wesel to Cassel and to Anspach, and after various reviews ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... gaunt man, with evident relief but no abatement whatever of his briskness, and he very hastily walked over to the right wings, where Jimmy, the house electrician, piloted the trio with equal relief through the clustered mass of singers to the door behind the boxes. As they emerged into the auditorium ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... or insignificant. Twenty years were gone from her age. Her eyes were shining, a tinge of color had come into her sallow cheeks, her whole figure had expanded. So I have seen a dull-eyed, listless lad change in an instant into briskness and life when given a task of which he felt himself master. She looked down at Agatha with an expression which I resented from the bottom of my soul—the expression with which a Roman empress might have looked at her kneeling slave. Then with a ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... if I had been whipped, my clothes were sodden and heavy, and not till I had washed my face and hands in the burn and stretched my legs up the hill-side did I feel restored to something of my ordinary briskness. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... Tournoire," said he, speaking with his usual briskness and directness, "there are, in most of the provinces of France, many Huguenots who have publicly recanted, to save their lives and estates. Many of these are secretly for us. They would join me, but they fear to do so lest their estates be confiscated. These are to be assured that ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... with his usual smiling briskness and greeted Tom pleasantly. "Congratulations, Tommy," said he. "I suppose I'll see you among the big guns to-night. You ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Circaeum,—familiar to the boys from their studies in Homer and Virgil,—while over the water the white sails of swift-moving vessels passed to and fro. The waves broke on the strand, fishing-boats were drawn up on the beach, and there were wonderful briskness and animation in ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... sea, but good common-sense songs, in which the lads kissed the lasses with a will, and had a good drink afterward, and a dance on the green on their homeward way. There was fun in those happy Mayfields, and good health and briskness in the ale-house choruses, and throughout them all a prevailing cheerfulness and contentment with the conditions of life certain to recommend itself to the contemplative mind. Mackenzie never tired of hearing those simple ditties. He grew confidential with the young man, and told ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... case of provisions was safely transferred to the porter with instructions to take charge of it till it was sent for. During the next few minutes Dickson's mind began to work upon his problem with a certain briskness. It was all nonsense that the law of Scotland could not be summoned to the defence. The jewels had been safely got rid of, and who was to dispute their possession? Not Dobson and his crew, who had no sort of title, and were out for naked ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the little bank, the shabby little banker, renewed that sense of disillusion that pervaded Peter's home-coming. In Boston the mulatto had done his slight banking business in a white marble structure with tellers of machine-like briskness and neatness. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... now with considerable briskness, there being no cause for tardiness or delay. Sego and Edith conversed in low tones, every look and action showing their perfect happiness, while the hardy leader of the Riflemen was as wretched an object as it is possible ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... Marilla, gustily. She felt a dismal suspicion that this was going to daunt her. But her habit of facing things came to the front. "Wednesday's only four days off," she said, with a fine assumption of briskness. "I don't suppose he said anything about ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... he had listened, he had had the same sensation as one would have upon hearing a Cabinet Minister, let us say, discussing stump-cricket with enthusiasm. Cathcart had said all kinds of things when once he was started—all with that air of businesslike briskness that was so characteristic of him and so disconcerting in such a connection. If he had apologized for it as an amiable weakness, if he had been in the least shamefaced or deprecatory, it would have been another matter; one would have forgiven it as one forgives any little ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... near two Hours, but not with near that Briskness it began; and the old Woman rising, bid me see the Smoke of Cormaco. Captain Thomas, said she, send away the ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt |
