"Sportive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and came close several times, grinding their teeth at us, especially when we were slaughtering the fish on the bank. We kept watch during the entire night, as on that occasion they were truly vicious. Our dogs, for a change, became quite sportive. One of them, named Negrino, got furious with the ariranhas, and, driven mad by their unmusical noises, actually jumped into the stream to go to their attack. In a moment he had quantities of ariranhas upon him, and was bitten savagely, one ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a very merry declaration, wishing to sound the mind of the maiden in talk of a friendly sort. And, in order not to inflict on himself a rebuff, he spoke in a mirthful vein, and broke the ground of his mission, by venturing to make up a sportive speech amid the applause of the revellers. The princess said that she disdained Frode because he lacked honour and glory. For in days of old no men were thought fit for the hand of high-born women but those who had won some great prize of glory by the lustre of their admirable deeds. Sloth was ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... who wears her potent spell With sparkling eye, and gaily dimpled cheek That sportive ease and conscious pow'r bespeak, Nor dreads that time her cherish'd pride ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... third and fourth decades of our century, in other words, since the epoch of the Reform Bill and the Chartist agitation, satire has more and more tended to lose its acid and its venom, to slough the dark sardonic sarcasm of past days and to don the light sportive garb of the social humorist and epigrammist. Robustious bludgeoning has gone out of fashion, and in its place we have the playful satiric wit, sparkling as of well-drawn Moet or Clicquot, of Mortimer Collins, H.S. Leigh, Arthur Locker and Frederick Locker-Lampson, W.S. Gilbert, Austin Dobson, ...
— English Satires • Various
... business, Lord Bramber thought. He had obtained an introduction to the earl within the last half-hour, and had not concealed his admiration for the earl's daughter. He had entreated the honor of a formal introduction to the exquisite creature with whom he had conversed on sportive terms last night ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the present, but which he prepared to give deadly effect to at the proper time. But, whilst it laughed, Klosterheim also trembled. Some persons, indeed, were of opinion that the answer of The Masque was a mere sportive effusion of malice or pleasantry from the students, who had suffered so much by his annoyances. But the majority, amongst whom was Adorni himself, thought otherwise. Apart even from the reply, or the insult which had provoked it, the general impression was, that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... be vile than vile esteem'd, When not to be receives reproach of being; And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem'd Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing: For why should others' false adulterate eyes Give salutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, Which in their wills count bad what I think good? No, I am that I am, and they that level At my abuses reckon up their own: I may be straight though they themselves be bevel; By ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... classics and rowing in the Trinity Hall boat. The house continued to be managed for the two young men by their grandmother, Mrs. Chatfield, known to Sir Charles and to all his intimates as the "Dragon," 'on account of the sportive old soul calling herself the Dragon of Wantley whenever she attacked me in arms.' With her lived her niece, Miss Folkard, a quiet little old lady. When Charles Dilke married, Mrs. Chatfield and Miss Folkard made ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... are usually as still as those of a lake. For days and weeks together, they reflect each separate tree-top of the pine-forests which clothe the mountain sides, the mirror being broken only by the leap of some sportive fish, or the oars of the boatman as he goes to inspect the sea-fowl from islet to islet of the fiord, or carries out his nets or his rod to catch the sea-trout or char, or cod, or herrings, which abound, in their seasons, ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... the muddy street; then springing up again like a flash, he resumed his place on the gate, and looked as innocent as a lamb. But the man picked himself up slowly, and turning round, poured a torrent of angry words on the sportive youth. ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... of the most brilliant orbs in the sphere of fashion, she suddenly retired, and like her morose brother, shut herself up from the world. While she lived in this seclusion, she became an object of the sportive satire of the late Mr ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... 254: The word na-u refers to a sportive contest involving a trial of lung-power, that was practised by the youth of Kona, Hawaii, as well as of other places. They stood on the shore at sunset, and as the lower limb of the sun touched the ocean horizon each one, having filled his lungs to the utmost, began the utterance of the sound ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... think it was simplicity, rather than mischief, with perhaps a youthful playfulness, that led him to this outbreak. I have often noticed that even quiet horses, on a sharp November morning, when their coats are beginning to get the winter roughness, will give little sportive demi-kicks, with slight sudden elevation of the subsequent region of the body, and a sharp short whinny,—by no means intending to put their heels through the dasher, or to address the driver rudely, but feeling, to use a familiar word, frisky. This, I think, is the physiological condition ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... double sadness and solemnity upon his withered countenance; the night was very windy, and every instant a rapid current seized the unhappy sea-green vesture, whirled it in the air, and threw it, as if in scorn, over the very face of the miserable professor. The constant recurrence of this sportive irreverence of the gales—the high sides of the basket, and the trembling agitation of the inmate, never too agile, rendered it a work of some time for Monsieur Margot to transfer himself from the basket to the ladder; at length, he ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sportive, but not mischievous, in the human sense. They frolic in the pure delight of motion. By mortal standards of age they are between childhood and youth, when limbs are long and bodies supple. Their ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Shakespeare puts him into battle. Here is a vain person, and Malvolio is imprisoned and twitted by a clown. Here is an ignoramus, and Dogberry is placed on the judge's bench. These contrasts might, indeed, be tragic enough, but they are actually comic. Such characters are not ruled by fate but by a sportive chance. The gods connive at them. They are ruled, like tragic characters, by necessity and blindness; but the blindness, instead of leading to tragic ruin, leads only to being caught as in some harmless game of blind-man's-buff. There is retribution, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... watched the sportive bears from a little distance, standing body deep among the bushes, and regarding them with gravity. It pleased Henry to see a twinkle of amusement in the great eyes of the deer, which kept his ground unafraid, despite the presence ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... honor and wealth upon my friend. The generous sportive boy, who cared naught for gold, actually grew rich, for the Sphinx had granted him the most lucrative office in the county, the people made him their sheriff. He rose step by step to the highest place of honor in the ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... adj. lu'dicrus, sportive, laughable); allude', literally, to play at, to refer to indirectly; delude'; ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... sportive speech, And mirthful tales of earlier years, Though deep within the soul of each Lay thoughts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... buried his dead, questions the knights who were lured away by Armida, and they relate that, on arriving near the Dead Sea, they were entertained at a sumptuous banquet, where they were given a magic draught, which transformed them for a time into sportive fishes. Armida, having thus demonstrated her power over them, threatened to use it to keep them prisoners forever unless they would promise to abjure their faith. One alone yielded, but the rest, delivered ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... enough, you had only to look at him to see he had never worked. There was something too roguish and wanton in his face, a look too like that of a schoolboy or a street Arab, to have survived much cudgeling. It was plain that these feet had kicked off sportive children oftener than they had plodded with freight through miry lanes. He was altogether a fine-weather, holiday sort of a donkey; and though he was just then somewhat solemnized and rueful, he still gave proof of the levity of his disposition by impudently wagging his ears at me ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... himself upon a divan near Madame, with all the complacency of a man whose own foresight has saved him a serious trouble, and said after mature deliberation, gazing thoughtfully at the sportive cherubs on the ceiling: ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... and agreeable; his step firm and graceful; his air neither grave nor familiar. He was as cheerful as he was spirited, frank and communicative in the society of friends, fond of the fox-chase and the dance, often sportive in his letters, and liked a hearty laugh. "His smile," writes Chastellux, "was always the smile of benevolence." This joyousness of disposition remained to the last, though the vastness of his responsibilities was soon to take from him the right of displaying the impulsive ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... on his dark horse, flecked with foam, made visible by the lantern placed on the steps near, where it had been left by the servants, who were dismayed at this news of the handsome young man who had frequented their master's house, so full of sportive elegance and winsomeness. Molly went up to the man, whose thoughts were lost in recollection of the scene he had left at the place he had ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... determine if I need abbreviate this blissful moment, I saw the enraged animal disappearing in the side door of the barn; and it was a nice, comfortable Durham cow,—that somewhat rare but possible thing, a sportive cow! ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... manner, the Dreever of the period had invariably sprung at it with the vim of an energetic blood-hound. The South Sea Bubble absorbed two hundred thousand pounds of good Dreever money, and the remainder of the family fortune was squandered to the ultimate penny by the sportive gentleman who held the title in the days of the Regency, when Watier's and the Cocoa Tree were in their prime, and fortunes had a habit of disappearing in a single evening. When Spennie became Earl of Dreever, there was about one dollar and thirty cents ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... Falmouth, waiting a favourable wind that would enable the sailing of the Lisbon packet. He seems to have been detained here about a week, during which time he made characteristic observations and embodied them in a letter to his friend Hodgson. With some sportive malice there was evidently a spice of truth in his remarks. He tells his friend that Falmouth "is defended on the sea side by two castles, St. Maws and Pendennis, extremely well calculated for annoying everybody except an enemy. St. Maws is garrisoned by an ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... rock—crevices which the sharpest eye in the country had never seen before. Curiosity led them towards the turret, when they were charmed by the most exquisite sounds ever emitted by a fiddle-string, which, joined to the sportive mirth and glee accompanying it, reconciled them in a great measure to the scene, although they knew well enough the inhabitants of the nook were fairies. Nay, overpowered by the enchanting jigs played by the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... experience versed in all the wiles, And subtle doublings of the various chase. Easy the lesson of the youthful train, When instinct prompts, and when example guides. If the too forward younker at the head 130 Press boldly on, in wanton sportive mood, Correct his haste, and let him feel abashed The ruling whip. But if he stoop behind In wary modest guise, to his own nose Confiding sure; give him full scope to work His winding way, and with thy voice applaud His patience, and his care; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... later it was on its flank, with all four legs stretched out, and its muzzle in the snow; and all these changes were made with the most extreme deliberation, and as if the animal was intent only upon its own enjoyment, and was as sportive as the unwieldy fat calves rolling about near their mothers ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... every day and chatted as familiarly as though he had been a lifelong crony of their own age. From time to time the boys were taken to dinner at the big house; they were given access to the library, and they found some time for social and sportive pastimes with the young folks whom Grace invited ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... biographer of the eminent American judge, Joseph Story, relates of him[236]—"To dumb creatures he was kind and considerate, and indignant at any ill usage of them. His sportive nature showed itself in the nicknames which, in parody of the American fondness of titles, he gave to his horses and dogs, as, 'The Right Honourable Mr ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... commence playing again, merely to show him that I scorn to be seduced by another into anything wrong." There is something in these few words that accords with the impression that the observant reader of Hawthorne gathers of the personal character that underlay his duskily-sportive imagination—an impression of simple ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... electrified it with a new and peculiar fervour of eloquence, such as had never been heard among us before, how manifold, how multiform have been this man's generous vindications of our great Bard! Now broad in humour; now sportive and playful; now sarcastic, scornful, and searching; now calmly philosophic in criticism; now thoughtful and solemn, large of reverent discourse, 'looking before and after,' with all the sweetest by-plays ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... regular and beautiful, and the houses are built in a style of architecture, which has given loose to the most sportive fancy. Each street is terminated with some public building, such as a great marine school, for the education of young officers and seamen; an hospital for decayed officers in the Company's service; churches; the Governor's palace, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... the third day of our operations a great school of sperm whales appeared, disporting all around the ship, apparently conscious of our helplessness to interfere with them. Notwithstanding our extraordinary haul, Captain Slocum went black with impotent rage, and, after glowering at the sportive monsters, beat a retreat below, unable to bear the sight any longer. During his absence we had a rare treat. The whole school surrounded the ship, and performed some of the strangest evolutions imaginable. As if instigated by one common ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... had even risen, for Mimi was dancing a waltz with Glogowski on the greensward. Topolski was so drunk that he continually kept talking to himself and quarreling with Majkowska. Kotlicki smiled and kept close to Janina who had become very sportive and merry. She smiled at him and conversed with him, hardly remembering his recent proposal. He was sure that the impression of it had merely glided over her soul and ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... precious than life itself? and yet for this are none beholden, save to me alone. For it is neither the spear of throughly-begotten Pallas, nor the buckler of cloud-gathering Jove, that multiplies and propagates mankind: but my sportive and tickling recreation that proceeded the old crabbed philosophers, and those who now supply their stead, the mortified monks and friars; as also kings, priests, and popes, nay, the whole tribe of poetic gods, who are at last grown so ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... the pink cover of Punch's monthly parts. A cover was produced by Kenny Meadows, and then for January, 1844, Richard Doyle, the latest recruit, whose merit had been quickly gauged, was employed to execute the new one. This wrapper was far more in accord with the true spirit of Punch. More sportive and rollicking, and with less attempt at grace, it threw over the style of the "Newcastle School"—of which Landells was a member—and gave the general idea of the latest of all covers. This was not executed until January, 1849, when several changes of detail were made, including the substitution ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... I have seen them run breathlessly up the long slope, and then suddenly turn and rush pell-mell down again. If the wind had only stopped for a moment its endless gossip with the leaves, I am sure I should have heard the gleeful shouts, the sportive cries, of these vagrant flowers whose spell is rewoven over every generation of children, and whose unstudied beauty and joy recall, with every summer, some of the clews which most of us have lost in ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of life with God: whereas, when one has but to lift one's eyes in order to receive the exquisite shocks of thrilling form and color and motion that leap invisibly from mountain and groves and stream, then one feels as if one had surprised the Father in his tender, sportive, and loving moments. ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... melancholy, the clouds of which darkened the brightness of his fancy, and gave a gloomy cast to his whole course of thinking: yet, though grave and awful in his deportment, when he thought it necessary or proper, he frequently indulged himself in pleasantry and sportive sallies. He was prone to superstition, but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to a belief of the marvellous, and the mysterious, his vigorous reason examined the evidence with jealousy. He had a loud voice, and a slow deliberate utterance, which no doubt gave some additional ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... dead days beyond recall, when but a happy child, George had been smitten unexpectedly by a sportive playmate a bare half-inch below his third waistcoat-button. The resulting emotions were still green in his memory. As he had felt then, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... midst their sportive pennons waved Thousands of angels, in resplendence each Distinct and quaint adornment. At their glee And carol smiled the Lovely One of heaven That joy was in the eyes of all ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... be sportive as the fawn That wild with glee across the lawn Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm Of mute, ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... roughness absolutely reminds one of 'Bowling-green Lane!') appear to me to be awkward appendages. The illustration is too much extended. It is laboured; far-fetched. It is an infelicitous attempt to blend sportive fancy with fact that has touched the heart, and which, in this its sobered mood, shrinks from all idle play of imagination. The transition is too abrupt from truth to fancy. This simile of two stanzas, also, out of five, is a tail disproportioned to the size of so ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... was not offering me a light honor: The Author's name meant a great deal. Who, then, was I, a woman named Smith, to say nay to this miraculous possibility? Was it not rather for me to accept, meekly, the high gift that the gods in a sportive moment chose to toss to me? Yea, verily. And yet— My hand stole to the half of a thin old foreign coin hidden in ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... and I have come to see the latter-day hero," said Edith laughing as she entered the room; "though I know that you are so done up with pistols that no peaceable young woman ought to come near you." To this he made some sportive reply, and then before a minute had passed over their heads he had ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... the servant. Look around you, Senor Penitentiary, and you will see the admirable aggregation of truths which has taken the place of fable. The sky is not a vault; the stars are not little lamps; the moon is not a sportive huntress, but an opaque mass of stone; the sun is not a gayly adorned and vagabond charioteer but a fixed fire; Scylla and Charybdis are not nymphs but sunken rocks; the sirens are seals; and in the order of personages, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... not write John Gilpin which is certainly his masterpiece, in the mood of a man using wit as a decoy. He wrote it because it irresistibly demanded to be written. "I wonder," he once wrote to Newton, "that a sportive thought should ever knock at the door of my intellects, and still more that it should gain admittance. It is as if harlequin should intrude himself into the gloomy chamber where a corpse is deposited in state." ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... knew this gesture of her father's; it was the omen of some kindly, often sportive suggestion, such as he loved to surprise his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... robbed of their numerous prey. When the new day dawned the friends were still on deck, engaged in grave conversation. The cloudless sky now arched in radiant light above the azure sea. White seagulls came flying from the right across the ship, and sportive dolphins ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... babe trusts life when it gropes for its mother's breast, so the most skeptical of scientists trusts it when he declares that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, and sets it down for a certainty that this will always be so—that he is not being played with by some sportive demon, who will today cause H20 to behave like water, and tomorrow ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... or invalids during the winter months. It is impossible for any spot to be better adapted for a number of houses being built in a comparatively small compass: for the whole of the ground is so romantically tossed about by the sportive hand of Nature,—presenting here a lofty ridge of rocks, there a woody dell adorned with a purling stream or a limpid pool, that most of the houses are completely hid from each ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... of these forms of magic, or spiritualism, the presence and aid of 'spirits' is believed to be necessary, with, perhaps, the exception of the sportive or conjuring class. A spirit helps to cure and helps to kill. The free spirit of the clairvoyant in bondage meets other spirits in its wanderings. Anthropologists, taking it for granted that 'spirits' are a mere 'animistic ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... certain class of wild young men and confirmed Bohemians Fouchette had quickly achieved a sort of vogue which attaches to an eccentric woman in Paris. She was eccentric in that she danced eccentric dances, was the most reckless in the sportive circle, the highest kicker at the Bullier, and, most of all, in that she had no lovers. Unlike the Mimi Pinsons of the Murger era of the quarter, Fouchette was the most notorious of grisettes without being a grisette. At the fete of the student painters ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... was situated on the green plain of Ida, and was called Idavold. Here the gods would resort when in sportive mood, and their favourite game was to throw their golden disks, which they could cast with great skill. They had returned to this wonted pastime with redoubled zest since the cloud which had oppressed their spirits had been dispersed by the precautions of Frigga. Wearied at last, however, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children. But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child comprehended her loneliness: the destiny that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... transverse, Receives the morsel—flesh obscene of dog, Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race, They pick their fuel out of every hedge, Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unqueuched The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin, The vellum of ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... human nature, and as often blended with pathos." A friendly rival in lexicography defines the same prized human attribute more lightly as "a facetious turn of thought," or more specifically in literature, as "a sportive exercise of the imagination that is apparent in the choice and treatment of an idea or theme." Isn't there something about that word "sportive," on the lips of so learned an authority, that tickles the fancy—appeals ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... conflict over, whether the following may not be weaker and weaker, till willingness ensue, is the point to be tried. I will illustrate what I have said by the simile of a bird new caught. We begin, when boys, with birds; and when grown up, go on to women; and both perhaps, in turn, experience our sportive cruelty. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... water as if to kiss their reflected images; and, rising suddenly in long rapid flights, mount in circles up high above the tranquil world into the azure sky, till small white specks alone are visible in the distance. Up, up they rise on sportive wing, till the straining eye can no longer distinguish them, and they are gone! Ducks, too, whir past in rapid flight, steering wide of the boats, and again bending in long graceful curves into their ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... not content with being able to fly at its ease through the air, overcome by the tempting flame of the candle, decided to fly into it; but its sportive impulse was the cause of a sudden fall, for its delicate wings were burnt in the flame. And the hapless butterfly having dropped, all scorched, at the foot of the candlestick, after much lamentation and repentance, dried the tears from its swimming eyes, and raising ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... back into darkness, continuing, as before, to revel in falsehood, and scatter destruction around her. With this single exception, there is not the slightest appearance of compunction or reflection among them. On the contrary, they seem to have been in a frivolous, sportive, gay frame of thought and spirits. There is, perhaps, in this view of their conduct and demeanor, something to justify the belief that they were really demented. The fact that a large amount of skilful art ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the olden time, when the country was new, and neighbors were farther apart and more friendly; while the young people, happy as a flock of birds in the sunny days of mate-choosing, and freshly blooming as the landscape—around them, were out on the mown field adjacent to the house, whirling in the sportive ring, bounding in the merry dance, chatting in agreeable groups, or chasing one another on flying feet to exact or administer some little forfeit, or whisper some ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... hear?" cried Belvedere. "The lads are for ending of 'em sportive fashion—especially the Don; he must die slow and quaint for sake 'o the good lads as do hang a-rotting on his cursed gibbets e'en now—quaint and slow; the lads think so ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... hunger, wretchedness, dull toil, unspeakable misery. Take it at its best, and consider what a modern engagement really means. Recollect, moreover, that I am about to use sentences accurate as a photograph. The sportive Pressman says, "Vernon began to find the enemy's cloud of sharp-shooters troublesome, so the 5th sought better cover on the right, leaving Brown free to develop his artillery fire." "Troublesome!" Translate that word, and it means this: Private ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of life should have continued in this individual bird down to within so short a period of the end; that it should have been not only strong enough to find its food, but to rush and wheel about for long intervals in purely sportive exercises, when the brief twilight of decline and final extinction were so near! It becomes credible—we can even believe that most of the individuals that cease to exist only when the vital fire has burnt itself out, fall on death in this swift, easy ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... Fiery Furnace; they look as if they were presenting a vaudeville turn, being spirited in action, and very dramatic. Below all, is a masterly panel of Jonah and the whale,—an old favourite, frequently appearing in mediaeval art. The whale, positively smiling and sportive, eagerly awaits his prey at the right. Jonah is making a graceful dive from the ship, apparently with an effort to land in the very jaws of the whale. At the opposite side, the whale, having coughed up his victim, looks disappointed, ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... windows, cheeks hollowed above the savory mechanism invented by Patricia Whipple. Down one side of River Street to its last shop, and up the other, they progressed haltingly. At many of the windows the capitalist displayed interest only of the most academic character. At others he made sportive threats. Thus before the jewellery shop of Rapp Brothers he quite unnerved Merle by announcing that he could buy everything in that window if he wanted to—necklaces and rings and pins and gold watches—and he might ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... me leave, with the sportive sea-porpoises, preludiately a little to play before the storm of my tears, to make my prayer before I proceed to my sacrifice. Lo, for an oblation to the rich burnished shrine of your virtue, a handful of Jerusalem's mummianized earth, in a few sheets of waste paper enwrapped, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... powerful black-robed priest and this gallant sailor-soldier, richly dressed in fine skins and furs, with long waving hair, more like a Viking than a man of fashion, and carrying a courtly and yet sportive look, as though he could laugh at the miseries of the sinful world. Three strange comrades were these, who knew each other so far as one man can know another, yet each knowing from a different stand-point. Perrot knew certain traits of Iberville ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... To work this sportive vein still further, Mr Brass, by his counsel, moved in arrest of judgment that he had been led to criminate himself, by assurances of safety and promises of pardon, and claimed the leniency which the law extends to such confiding natures as are thus ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... taxed with inconstancy, you will find me Italian in faithfulness and memory. While writing the name of "Eugenie," my thoughts have often led me back to that cool stuccoed salon and little garden in the Vicolo dei Cappucini, which echoed to the laughter of that dear child, to our sportive quarrels and our chatter. But you have left the Corso for the Tre Monasteri, and I know not how you are placed there; consequently, I am forced to think of you, not among the charming things with which no doubt ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... and Dick's happiness most of the way to Witherby. The telegram despatched, prepaid with the porterage by Viviette, Austin felt that he had done his duty by his brother, and deserved some consideration on his own account. And here it was that the summer began its game with their hearts. On such sportive occasions it is not so much what is said that matters. A conversation that might be entirely conventional between comparative strangers in a fog may become the most romantic interchange of sentiment imaginable between intimates in the sunshine. There are tones, there are glances, there are half-veiled ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... village baseball grounds. And now came the sportive youth of Fishampton and distributed ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Never under such dark and griddled elms had the outlaws feasted upon their venison. Never had any Rosalind traced with such shy wonder the writing of her lover upon the bark, nor any Orlando won such laughter for his not really sportive dalliance. Fairer than the mummers, it may be, were the ladies who sat and watched them from the lawn. All of them wore jerseys and tied-back skirts. Zulu hats shaded their eyes from the sun. Bangles shimmered upon their wrists. And the gentlemen wore light frock-coats and ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... sea, Bounding and free, O soothe me to sleep with thy sweet lullaby! As when a child, Sportive and wild, Thy waves and I gamboll'd, ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... the long night, With fleet foot glancing white, Shall I go dancing in my revelry, My neck cast back, and bare Unto the dewy air, Like sportive faun in the green ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... duped agent of a cruel trick, appeals to us by her slow, incredulous, but eager response to goodness and aspiration, the tremulous opening of her soul to love. But Pippa, with her observant love of nature, her gay, sportive, winsome fancies, her imaginative sympathy with the lives of others, her knowledge of good and evil, her poise, her bright steadiness of soul, carries us into a different and much more highly evolved ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... of poetry; Comedy altogether sportive. Now earnestness, as I observed in the Introduction, consists in the direction of the mental powers to an aim or purpose, and the limitation of their activity to that object. Its opposite, therefore, consists ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... days a hare-brained young reprobate must have found it rather more difficult to avoid matrimony than to achieve it. He might be married when he was tipsy; he might be married when he was comatose from the effects of a stand-up fight with Mohawks; his name might be assumed by some sportive Benedick of his acquaintance given to practical joking, and he might find himself saddled with a wife he never saw; or if, on the other hand, of an artful and deceptive turn, he might procure a certificate of a marriage that had never ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... liked and mistrusted in one breath. Meaning to do her a service, Tommy communicated this to her; and then, what do you think? Grizel would have no more dealings with him! By and by the gods, in a sportive mood, sent him to labour on a farm, whence, as we have seen, he found a way to London, and while he was growing into a man Grizel became a woman. At the time of the doctor's death she was nineteen, tall and graceful, and very ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... sitting room before a bright fire of logs. They had finished their private affairs. The day was two hours older, and a sunbeam that had pointed at them through the diamond-paned window had travelled away and vanished. The day was darker outside, and it was as though spring had lost her sportive mood and then withdrawn, not wishing to hear the tale that ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Sweet lays of sportive vein, Which help'd me to sustain Love's first assault, the only arms I bore; This flinty breast say who Shall once again subdue, That I with song may soothe me as before? Some power appears to trace Within ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... other she makes him look at different things, narrates to him tales and stories very slowly so that she may continue conversing with him for a long time, kisses and embraces before him a child sitting in her lap, draws ornamental marks on the foreheads of her female servants, performs sportive and graceful movements when her attendants speak jestingly to her in the presence of her lover, confides in her lover's friends, and respects and obeys them, shows kindness to his servants, converses with them, and engages them to do her ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... heightened by the recollection of the discomfiture which they had suffered, three years before, on the same spot, and of the insolence with which their enemy had then triumphed over them. They now triumphed in their turn. The Dutch struck medals. The Spaniards sang Te Deums. Many poems, serious and sportive, appeared, of which one only has lived. Prior burlesqued, with admirable spirit and pleasantry, the bombastic verses in which Boileau had celebrated the first taking of Namur. The two odes, printed side by side, were read with delight ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... poor brother Lippo, by your leave! You need not clap your torches to my face. Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk! What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds, And here you catch me at an alley's end Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar? The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up, Do—harry out, if you must show your zeal, Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole, And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, 10 , , that's crept to keep him company! Aha, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... on both sides. No villages, no human beings were seen. Tall trees stood on the bank like triumphal arches, and from their boughs hung lianas serving as rope ladders and swings for sportive monkeys with prehensile tails. Day after day the vessel glided farther into this humid land never before seen by white men. The Spaniards looked in vain for natives, and their eyes tried in vain to pierce the green murkiness between the tree trunks. The men showed increasing ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the friendliest interest in Bella's making a good match. Mrs Lammle said, in a sportive way, she really must show her beautiful Bella what kind of wealthy creatures she and Alfred had on hand, who would as one man fall at her feet enslaved. Fitting occasion made, Mrs Lammle accordingly produced the most passable of those ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the utmost freedom, and sang duets; I was perfectly at my ease, had sallies of wit and merriment; Father Cato was charming, Madam de Warrens adorable, and the Abbe Palais, with his rough voice, was the butt of the company. Pleasing moments of sportive youth, how long ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... But, gentle sir, if they desire to war, Why should we hinder such a sportive game? They own those isles, and why should we debar Them pastimes, for "they know ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... purple vineyards and with garden-plats; And in the vineyards and the garden-plats Were happy-hearted youths and merry girls Toiling and singing. Grandsires too were there, Sitting contented under their own vines And fig-trees, while about them merrily played Their children's children like the sportive lambs That frolicked on the foot-hills. Low of kine, Full-uddered, homeward-wending from the meads, Fell on the ear as soft as Hulder's loor Tuned on the Norse-land mountains. Like a nest Hid in a hawthorn-hedge a cottage stood Embowered with vines beneath broad-branching elms Sweet-voiced ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... on when Sheen arrived, and as he came into the room somebody turned the gas out. He found some matches on the chest of drawers, and lit it again just in time to see a sportive youth tearing the clothes off his bed and piling them on the floor. A month before he would not have known how to grapple with such a situation, but his evenings with Joe Bevan had given him the habit of making up his mind and acting rapidly. ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... softening the austerity of thoughts whose awful shadows dim and darken the brain,—loosening the gripe of Misery as it tugs at the heart-strings! Let us court the society of these gamesome, and genial, and sportive, and sparkling beings,—whom Genius has left to us as a priceless bequest; push them not from the daily walks of the world's life: let them scatter some humanities in the sullen marts of business; let them glide in through the open doors of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... and original ballad, let us turn to something more genial. The three following poems are exquisite specimens of the varied genius of our author; and we hardly know whether to prefer the plaintive beauty of the first, or the light and sportive brilliancy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front; And now,—instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,— He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I,—that am not shap'd for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... landward of the wavetips producing upon his eye an apparent progress of the pier out to sea. This pier-head was a spot which Christopher enjoyed visiting on such moaning and sighing nights as the present, when the sportive and variegated throng that haunted the pier on autumn days was no longer there, and he seemed alone with ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... fell; and at the same instant the cause of my alarm wheeled past me at full gallop. It was one of the young fillies which pastured loose about the park, whose frolics had thus all but maddened me with terror. I scrambled to my feet, and rushed on with weak but rapid steps, my sportive companion still galloping round and round me with many a frisk and fling, until, at length, more dead than alive, I reached the avenue-gate, and crossed the stile, I scarce knew how. I ran through the village, ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... accents low, The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glittering female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display: On hasty wings thy youth is flown; Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone— We frolic while ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... And when he was only six years of age, endued with great strength he used to seize and bind to the trees that stood around that asylum, lions and tigers and bears and buffaloes and elephants. And he rode on some animals, and pursued others in sportive mood. The dwellers at Kanwa's asylum thereupon bestowed on him a name. And they said, because he seizes and restrains an animals however strong, let him, be called Sarvadamana (the subduer of all). And it was thus ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... extraordinary care was taken by their breeders and teachers in selection, and that the species had wonderfully improved during the last few years. I saw no other pet animals among this community except some very amusing and sportive creatures of the Batrachian species, resembling frogs, but with very intelligent countenances, which the children were fond of, and kept in their private gardens. They appear to have no animals akin to our dogs or horses, though that learned naturalist, Zee, informed ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... long-drawn inspirations of Mrs Wickam's breath. His temper gave abundant promise of being imperious in after-life; and he had as hopeful an apprehension of his own importance, and the rightful subservience of all other things and persons to it, as heart could desire. He was childish and sportive enough at times, and not of a sullen disposition; but he had a strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at other times, of sitting brooding in his miniature arm-chair, when he looked (and talked) like one of those terrible little Beings in the Fairy tales, who, at a hundred ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... gliding down her cheeks. Miss Egerton, greatly amazed at the oddness of this closet scene, turned to Miss Beaufort, who a moment before having caught a glimpse of the distressed countenance of the count, could only bow her head to Sophia's sportive observation. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... Scotland's soil when Scotland knew To be herself, nor lusted to assume Smooth English ways—that they might live and bloom With freshness, ever old and ever new In human hearts. Thrice happy he who knows With sportive light the cloudy thought to clear, And round his head the playful halo throws That plucks the terror from the front severe: Such grace was thine, and such thy gracious part, Thou wise old Scottish man of ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... a rabbit. He was about descending to the basement below, when he saw, close before him, a bear leisurely mounting the marble stairs. Kuzundam is no coward, but he turned and ran as he never ran before. The bear, who seemed of a sportive nature, also ran, and in close pursuit. Luckily for my friend we happened to be near, otherwise instead of our eating bear's meat, the bear might have lunched quietly off Kuzundam in the shady corridors ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... and noise into the lake, and spread their froth upon its surface. On one side, the water-eagle sits in majesty, undisturbed, on his well-known rock, in sight of his nest, on the face of Ben Venue; the heron stalks among the reeds in search of his prey; and the sportive ducks gambol on the waters or dive below. On the other, the wild goats climb, where they have scarce ground for the soles of their feet; and the wild fowl, perched on the trees, or on the pinnacle of a rock, look down with composed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... other barbarous tyranny of fashion; yet it was graceful, and did not in the least degree approach an unseemly obesity; and how magnificently did it expand into a glorious bust, whereon two "hillocks of snow" projected their rose-tinted peaks, in sportive rivalry—revealed, with bewildering distinctness, by the absence of any concealing drapery! When she smiled, her lips, like "wet coral," parted, and displayed teeth of dazzling whiteness, and when she laughed, she did so musically. Her hand would have put Lord Byron in extacies, and her taper ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Sally, eagerly. He had never said anything before about her clothes. She was suddenly sportive ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... as your task is to discover money where there is none, I advise you to borrow the wonderful lamp of Aladin," gayly added Rowley, as the question was put, and carried; and the council, in a half-serious, half-sportive mood, broke up, and ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... we could see hundreds of men in white suits moving about. Some seemed engaged in conversation, others in sportive games, and ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... tall, broad-shouldered, handsome Englishman, and the trim, dainty little figure in fleecy white, with the ermine wrap thrown over the pretty plump shoulders and round neck, on which rare diamonds, that would have paid a king's ransom, gleamed fitfully whenever the sportive breeze tossed back the ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... sportive way she ran on, saying all kinds of lively nothings; while we drank our coffee out of Saxon porcelain which would have shone on the table of a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... key note to the old Negro's character and temperament. He was making a sort of privileged game with a sportive twist out of his ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... the fire, quivering about it in a mute, astonished dance. The wood crackled, and the leaves of the trees rustled softly. Alarmed by the waves of the heated atmosphere, the merry, vivacious tongues of fire, yellow and red, in sportive embrace, soared aloft, sowing sparks. The burning leaves flew, and the stars in the sky smiled to the sparks, luring them ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... went together in glowing August weather, The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right; And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seem'd to float on The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... with their unripe fruits, Among the woods and copses lose themselves, Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb The wild green landscape. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees, With some uncertain notice, as might seem, Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... wake thy silent lyre Our British Muse, our charming Seward, deigns!— With more harmonious tones, more sportive fire Beneath her hand arise ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... the minds of children, require exercise for their growth: and as their disposition is thus lively and sportive, such exercises, as are amusing, are necessary, and such amusements, on account of the length of the spring which they enjoy, must be ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... please. Those things would scarce be proper now. But they are gone, I know not how, And woman's written on your brow. Time draws his finger o'er the scene; But I cannot forget between The Thing to me you once have been Each sportive sally, wild escape,— The scoff, the banter, and the jape,— And antics of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Shows piety in practice to the world. Well I remember, tho' long years have past, Long years with dark calamity o'ercast, Well I remember, and with grateful pride, How to my heart thy friendly verse supplied The glow of exultation; for thy praise Shed gracious honour on my sportive lays. When 'twas my aim to clear from thorns of strife The budding roses of domestic life, And teach young nymphs, in irritation's hour, To triumph over spleen's insidious power. O that, while glowing with celestial hope, Gently we haste down life's autumnal slope, Each well convinc'd, ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... it has already been remarked, had much vivacity and sportive humour, with very engaging frankness of temper and manners. Early in her widowhood she was rallied in a large company upon Dr. Darwin's passion for her, and was asked what she would do with her captive philosopher. 'He is not very fond of churches, I believe,' said she, 'and even ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... sportive friend, Little is't to such an end That I praise thy rareness: Other dogs may be thy peers Happy in these drooping ears And this ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... speculate how the thing first came about, whether the sportive anthropoid ape took to riding on a wild goat before he emerged as a man keeping flocks, or whether some great pioneer, destined to be worshipped in after ages as a demigod, showed his fellows how the wild calves, if taken young, might be trained into tractable slaves; and it is ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... parading on the lawn which fronts the Railway Hotel, puffing a cigarette, briskly turning and returning with something of the motion of a captive lion. I knew that pinky cheek, I knew that bright blue eye; yet here, in the wilds of Galway who could it be? He plays with two sportive spaniels, and cries "Down, Sir, down." Thy voice bewrayeth thee, member for North Galway! The Parnellitic Colonel Nolan, thou, in propria persona. What makes he here? When the great Bill impends, why flee the festive scene? I'll speak a little with this learned Theban. I board ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... sneering and critical? this the blue-stocking, of whom I stood in terror and dislike? this wondrous woman, full of counsel, full of tenderness, before whom every mean thing is ashamed, and hides itself; this new Corinne, more variously gifted, wise, sportive, eloquent, who seems to have learned all languages, Heaven knows when or how,—I should think she was born to them,—magnificent, prophetic, reading my life at her will, and puzzling me with riddles like this, 'Yours is an example of a destiny springing from character:' ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... retired: (His was the strength that mortal might exceeds, And his the unrivall'd race of heavenly steeds:) But Thetis' son now shines in arms no more; His troops, neglected on the sandy shore. In empty air their sportive javelins throw, Or whirl the disk, or bend an idle bow: Unstain'd with blood his cover'd chariots stand; The immortal coursers graze along the strand; But the brave chiefs the inglorious life deplored, And, wandering o'er the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer |
