"Gymnast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made me, as far as she could, a—what shall I say? a kind of little intellectual gymnast, fit to begin any study; but she left me to choose my own line. Well, I was for natural history first; began like a girl; gathered wild flowers and simples at Epsom, along with an old woman; she discoursed on their traditional virtues, and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... waving to and fro; the limbs are bending at their articulations; the fore-limbs, which are relatively powerful, open and shut their talons. I can scarcely think of any more curious spectacle than that of this tiny gymnast hanging by its tail, swinging to the faintest breath, and preparing in the air for its entry into the world. It hangs there for a variable period; some larvae let themselves fall at the end of half an hour; others spend hours in their ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... spirit that makes it a joyous festival to many was not in him. Of the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty he knew nothing. He distinguished himself in mathematics (especially in geometry, which is the most logical of studies) and in the students' debating-societies. He was also an excellent gymnast. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... know! But those dumb-bells of yours wouldn't give a consumptive two degrees of fever. I mean real exercise. You've got to join a gymnasium. 'Member you told me you were such a trick gymnast once that they tried to get you out for the team in college and they couldn't because you had a ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... perseveringly at his problems, disdaining to be aided by criticism or crushed by opposition. His power has silently gathered its energies in the mines of Thought, dark but rich, striking shaft after shaft of vast promise. He is a gymnast struggling now with the realities and possibilities of Life, and no longer grappling with ignis-fatui in the marshes by the road. Now his humor gleams genially in keen, swift comparisons: he sports with truths, like a king tossing up his crown-jewels or Vishnu worlds in the 'Cosmogony ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... parents about 427 B.C.; died in Athens in 347; originally called Aristocles and surnamed Plato because of his broad shoulders; a disciple of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle; was the founder of the Academic school; in his youth a successful gymnast, soldier, and poet; traveled in Egypt, Sicily, and Magna Graecia; arrested in Syracuse by Dionysius, the tyrant, and sold as a slave in AEgina, where he was released and returned to Athens; revisited Syracuse in 367 and 361; lived afterward in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... with the story, told by Suetonius[76] and Dio Chrysostom,[77] that Nero caused a wooden theatre to be erected in the Campus, and that a gymnast who tried to play the part of Icarus fell so near the emperor as to bespatter ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... Gall and Washakie in the prime of their manhood, this chief had no peer in bodily perfection and masterful personality. No Greek or Roman gymnast was ever a finer model of physical beauty and power. He thrilled his men to frenzied action when he came upon the field. It was said of him that he sacrificed more youths by his personal influence in battle than any other leader, being very reckless himself ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... that he was in dangerous closeness to that aroused and angry reptile which his setting pole had prodded. While holding on for dear life Larry was exercising all the agility of a gymnast in a mad effort to do a little ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... imagination to think they are pitching and tossing before your eyes. A great breaker rises right in the way. The monster, with you in it, works its way up and feels of it. It is packed like a ledge of marble. Three whistles! The machine backs away and keeps backing, as a gymnast runs astern to get sea room and momentum for a big jump; as a giant swings aloft a heavy sledge, that it may come ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... boat belonging to the University, and rowed by a picked crew of stalwart young fellows. The bow oar and captain of the University crew was a powerful young man, who, like the captain of the girls' boat, was a noted gymnast. He had had one or two quiet trials with Miss Euthymia, in which, according to the ultras of the woman's rights party, he had not vindicated the superiority of his sex in the way which might have been expected. Indeed, it was claimed that he let a cannon-ball drop when he ought to have caught ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... all the world that this description of the crown prince should in any way convey the impression to my readers that he is a milksop or an overgrown child! Devoted to every form of sport, a splendid gymnast, a clever oarsman, a skilful driver and a bold rider, an excellent shot, he is in every sense of the word a manly young fellow, who, however, has been kept free from all contact with the darker sides of life, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... to the suspicion of herself as a witch, and the "repairing" of her name by Thomas' lawsuit, and her own indictment for familiarity with Satan some years later. That she had many of the traditional witch qualities, and was something of a gymnast and hypnotist, is written in the vivid recollections of Tash's experience with her. This was his account of it on oath thirty ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... "upbuilding process." Stiffness of joint, or tension of muscles, whether recognized or not, must first be done away with before "the body can be molded to the expression of high thought." For this purpose the "decomposing," "relaxing" or "devitalizing" motions are given. The old gymnast doubled up the fist and, with great tension, gave a blow which jarred the whole nervous system. The "freeing" motions of Delsarte give harmonious, restful, wave movements to all portions ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... relates little events in the life of the bridegroom from babyhood onwards. You learn that he was a clever child, that he lived at home with his mother instead of going abroad to learn his work, that when he was young he ardently desired to go on the stage, that he is a fine gymnast and musician, but that he needs a wife because he is a dreamy person capable of putting on odd boots. Another Tafel-Lied describes the courtship step by step, and even the assistance given by the poet's wife to bring the romance to ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... sure-footed as a gazelle in climbing about the rocks, leaping from stone to stone, and even making her way up a tree that had convenient branches, if the whim took her, using her hands and arms like a gymnast, and performing whatever feat of. daring or dexterity as if the exquisitely molded form was all instinct with her indomitable will, and obeyed it, and always with an air of refinement and spirited breeding. A child of nature in seeming, but yet a woman who ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... my life, I always have a movement of recoil. I cling for a second to what is, and then I fling myself headlong into what is to be. It is like a gymnast who clings first to his trapeze bar in order to fling himself afterwards with full force into space. In one second what now is becomes for me what was, and I love it with tender emotion as something dead. But I adore what is to be without seeking even to know about it, for ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... book wherein he was, as also to write handsomely, to draw and form the antique and Roman letters. This being done, they went out of their house, and with them a young gentleman of Touraine, named the Esquire Gymnast, who taught him the art of riding. Changing then his clothes, he rode a Naples courser, a Dutch roussin, a Spanish jennet, a barded or trapped steed, then a light fleet horse, unto whom he gave a hundred carieres, made him go the high saults, bounding in the air, free the ditch with a ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... courses, lasting for three years, for the training of such "sick-gymnasts," and the pupils are very often ladies from the best families. A qualified "sick-gymnast" often gets a remunerative practice, and may make an annual income of 10,000 marks ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... well uttered, Alfred, who was a practised gymnast, bounded off the ground without touching it with his hands, and fled like a deer towards the front of the house: for he remembered the open iron gate. The attendants followed shouting, and whistle ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... especially for highest poems, is the sole course open to these States. Books are to be call'd for, and supplied, on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half-sleep, but, in highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself, must be on the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay—the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start or frame-work. Not the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... whatever. But for the whole work, with this exception, we have only praise. It is, we believe, the most practical, sensible book and the one most easy of application on this subject extant in any language. Let all interested remember that while it is indispensable to every gymnasium and every gymnast, its price is only ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
