"Buoyant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... James Bellingham, seeing Lapham pass this crisis and that, began to fancy that he might pull through altogether; and at these moments, when his adviser could not oppose anything but experience and probability to the evidence of the fact, Lapham was buoyant with courage, and imparted his hopefulness to his household. Our theory of disaster, of sorrow, of affliction, borrowed from the poets and novelists, is that it is incessant; but every passage in our own lives and in the lives of others, so far as we have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with Providence, Septimius?" asked Rose, a feeling of solemnity coming over her cheerful and buoyant nature. Then she burst out a-laughing. "How grave he looks, Robert; as if he had lived two or three lives already, and knew all about the value of it. But I think it was worth while to be born, if only for the sake of one such pleasant spring morning ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... remembered on another head in vanished years; from under those waves looked large, violet-blue eyes with very black lashes and brows—and the Old Lady knew those eyes as well as she knew her own; and the new music teacher's face, with all its beauty of delicate outline and dainty colouring and glad, buoyant youth, was a face from the Old Lady's past—a perfect resemblance in every respect save one; the face which the Old Lady remembered had been weak, with all its charm; but this girl's face possessed a fine, dominant strength compact of sweetness ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that; they were both young and buoyant with hope just now— in short, Will felt his love so strong that he was sure it could bridge the whole distance from China to that dread attic in Paradise Row, and surround Bet's heart and life with a halo ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... Losing nothing of his genial humor, his character took on the dignity of a graver manhood. He was still the center of interest of every social group he encountered, whether on the street or in the parlor. Serene and buoyant of temper, cordial and winning of language, charitable and tolerant of opinion, his very presence diffused a glow of confidence and kindness. Wherever he went he left an ever-widening ripple of smiles, jests, and laughter. His radiant good-fellowship was beloved ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... of water, but it did not sink, being buoyant enough to keep on the surface; but Owen found it as much as he could do to push the unwieldly thing along when he began to make for the ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... knew him well had the conviction that, even with time, these literary arts would never be his. His poem, The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich, has some admirable Homeric qualities—out-of-doors freshness, life, naturalness, buoyant rapidity. Some of the expressions in that poem ... come back now to my ear with the true Homeric ring. But that in him of which I think oftenest is the Homeric simplicity of ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... and they had a long conference. It now seemed probable that stocks would be more buoyant and the "bulls" would have their turn. Any considerable rise in shares would place Bullion on his feet and enable him to resume payment. Most of his time-contracts had been met, and the change would be of the greatest service to him. He placed his shares, therefore, in Tonsor's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... felt the throb of mighty engines that came to him from afar, and considered what mastery over the deeps they represented, the thought occurred to him that he, too, was master of the boundless water, buoyant at his will. An exaltation sprang up in him as he realised throughout all his fibre its sensuous ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... away; a waif about the land—a feather on the world, driven about, as destiny impels, without fixed intentions; yet buoyant with the ardor of youth, and happy in the excess of youthful hopes, dreamy and wild adventures. He has tasted the savage love of woods and wilds, and the nature—which was born thousands of years ere ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... painter and how various he was. There only, but surely there, can the influence and pressure of the things of time on his immortal spirit be understood; how much of him was killed or changed, how much of him could not be. There are the first-fruits of his flowering manhood, when the bright and buoyant genius in him had free play and large delight in its handiwork; when the fresh interest of invention was still his, and the dramatic sense, the pleasure in the play of life, the power of motion and variety; before the old strength of sight and of ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... condition of things; it opened up the overgrown minds, and created possibility for the new. At present he had no great number of adherents; various new currents were fighting over the minds, which, in their faltering search, were drawn now to one side, now to the other. But he had a buoyant feeling of serving a world-idea, and did ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... mother had painted it in colors too bright; but it was his, the bit of the earth that belonged to him. The Anglo-Saxon joy of land-owning stirred for the first time within him—he would go to his own place. Buoyant with the new thought he sat down and wrote a letter. A cousin of the family, of a younger branch, a certain John Fairfield, lived yet upon the land. Not in the great house, for that had been closed many years, but in a small ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... time, but found greatly lacking in the power of sustentation. By curving the planes, and placing the concave surface downward, a sort of inverted bowl is formed in which the air gathers and exerts a buoyant effect. Just what the ratio of the curve should be is a matter of contention. In some instances one inch to the foot is found to be satisfactory; in others this is doubled, and there are a few cases in which a curve of as much ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... The most buoyant of optimists has moments of self-mockery, and the hardiest believer in ideal truth moods in which poetry seems the phantom and prose the fact. Such a mood had its share in colouring the dramatic sketch which, it is now pretty evident, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... was, I believe, a genuine element in it, for puffing can send upward only things that have a buoyant, rising quality in themselves; but there was also a great feeling of personal sympathy for my father and mother, of kindly indulgence for my youth, and of respectful recollection of my uncle and aunt; and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... had wandered about the rooms a little, Rachel Henderson's naturally buoyant temperament reasserted itself. She had brought some bright patterns of distemper with her which she gave to Hastings with precise instructions. She had visions of casement curtains to hide the nakedness of the big windows ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... His most buoyant and attractive girl is Freya Nelson (or Nielsen) in the volume alluded to; she, however, is pure Caucasian, and perhaps more American than European. Her beauty caresses the eye. The story is a good one, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... clean collar and a tie and indulged in the luxury of a shoe polish and a shave. When he stepped out upon the street after this he looked more like himself than he had for six months. Had it not been for his anxiety over the girl, he would have felt exultant, buoyant. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... waiting raccoon on the log appeared lifeless. Then one little black spot, which had seemed like a lump of mud against a dead grass-stalk, moved; then another, and another, and another—all over the pool. Pale throats began to throb rhythmically; and the pipings once more pulsed forth buoyant and strong. The frogs had utterly forgotten the intruder, and their bulging eyes were no longer fixed on the log. Nevertheless, as it chanced, there was not a single piper within reach of ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... friends, this moment My Duchy her dear hand restores to me To me's a dream. More buoyant would I tread Dumb street, deserted square, climb ruin'd wall, Where in a heap beneath a broken flag Lay Adria.— So that amid the ruins stood my love And stretched her hands so faintly—stretched her hands So faintly. See! She's mine! She ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... manner of college prizes, and was the Admirable-Crichton of Konigsberg University and the Graduates there. But in the end they proved to be gifts of the vocal sort rather: and have led only to what we see. A man, I should guess, rather of buoyant vivacity than of depth or strength in intellect or otherwise. Excessively buoyant, ingenious; full of wit, kindly exuberance; a loyal-hearted, gay-tempered man, and much a favorite in society as well as with the Prince. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... chance to run to the Yankees; and thousands of those whose elastic step kept time with the martial strains of the drum and fife, as they marched on through city and town, enroute to the front, were not elated with the hope of Southern success, but were buoyant with the prospects of reaching the North. The confederates found it no easy task to watch the negroes and the Yankees too; their attention could be given to but one at a time; as a slave expressed it, "when marsa watch the Yankee, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... the war between New Orleans, Havana, and Liverpool. A tremendous crowd had gathered at the dock to see the steamer off, and Lieutenant Irvin tried to persuade General Toombs to go below until the ship cleared. But the buoyant Georgian persisted in walking the deck, and was actually recognized by General Humphrey Marshall of Texas, who had known him in the ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... out of Poona toward the cheetah hills, Skag was buoyant with healthy energy. His heart was like the heart of a boy. Consistent with his old philosophical dogma, this present was certainly the best he had ever known. Carlin was in it, as surely as if she were present. Roderick Deal had proved to be a man to respect; and to love, secretly ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... the place afforded. As usual, the Malay coolies were late in arriving and began making many difficulties about various things. To cheer them I gave each f. 1.50 in advance, which made them all happy, and in buoyant, talkative spirits they immediately went off to buy rice, dried fish, tobacco, cigarettes, and other things. All was well, and at ten o'clock in the morning we finally started, with ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... tasteful wood-panelling, their creepers outside and their growing plants within. Mr. Howells has somewhere reversed the threadbare comparison of an Atlantic liner to a floating hotel, by likening a hostelry of this kind to a saloon steamer; and indeed the comparison is an apt one, so light and buoyant does the construction seem, with its gaily painted wooden sides, its glass-covered veranda decks, and its streaming flags. Perhaps the nearest analogue that we have to the life of an American summer hotel is seen in our large hydropathic establishments, such as those at Peebles or Crieff, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... quietly buoyant. Nor did there seem to be much reason why they should be. But the Padre's moods, even to his friends, were difficult to account for. Buck, on the contrary, seemed lost in a reverie which held him closely, and even tended to make ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Harriet Burrell was living the wholesome life that her environment made possible. She was a strong, healthy, buoyant girl, full of life and spirits, popular with everyone who knew her, and a superior being in the estimation of the three girls who were her close friends, even though she was unable to dress as well as they or to do other things ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... of the eye, the fearful gift of a diseased vision, still remains, but materially weakened and divested of its former terrors. My mind has recovered in some degree its shaken and suspended faculties. But happiness, the buoyant and elastic happiness of earlier days, has departed forever. Although, apparently, a practical disciple of Behmen, I am no believer in his visionary creed. Quiet is not happiness; nor can the absence of all strong and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in extensive groves near the banks of large lakes and rivers, sometimes found growing to 50 feet in length by 2 feet 6 inches; its specific gravity is greater than water, and therefore, when floated down in rafts, it is rendered buoyant with cross bars of pine. It is easily squared with the hatchet, and answers well for ship-building and heavy work; will endure the seasons for about fifteen years,[172] and does not decay in England so soon as in Canada.—Montgomery Martin's Canada, p. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Matilda Joslyn Gage to hold an umbrella over her, Miss Anthony read aloud a "Declaration of Independence" that re-echoed the sentiments of their first Declaration. It began by saying: "While the nation is buoyant with patriotism, and all hearts are attuned to praise, it is with sorrow we come to strike the one discordant ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... terra firma, though at a distance and but gloomy in aspect, put all on board in buoyant spirits; but these were but transitory, our enthusiasm being soon damped by a dense fog, resembling those the Londoners are so accustomed to see in the winter, and which in an incredibly short space of time, in this instance, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... his mother. Here he lived with his books, and made enough money to support himself decently. He never had asked Betty to marry him, although he knew that his aunt would champion his cause. During the period of Betty's maiden passion his pride had caused her as much suffering as her youth and buoyant nature would permit; but as the years slipped by she felt inclined to personify that pride and burn a candle beneath it. Even before her mind had awakened, the energy and strength of her character had cured her of love for a man as supine as Jack Emory. He was charming and well read, ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... vanished 'neath their feet,— And down they went,—the giddy things! But Hope put forth his ready wings,— And clinging Love and Youth he bore In triumph to the other shore. But ne'er I ween should mortals deem On rainbow bridge to cross a stream, Unless bright, buoyant Hope is nigh, And, light with ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... to say that success is generously defined and the disciples of this New Thought are asked also to live in the finer senses—the recognition of beauty and friendship and goodness, that is—but on the whole the ideal character so defined is a buoyant optimist who sells his goods, succeeds in his plans and has his own way with the world. It is the apotheosis of what James called "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness"; it all fits easily into the dominant temper of our time and seems to reconcile that serving ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... eighteen. Eighteen is a beautiful age—a careless and yet a grave age. Girls are so full of desires then; life stretches before them like a brilliant line of light. Everything is possible; they are not really at the top of the hill, and they feel so fresh and buoyant that it is a pleasure to climb. There is a feeling of morning in the air. At eighteen it is a good thing to be alive. Now, at eight-and-twenty one has learned to take life hard; a girl is old then, and yet not old enough. She is apt to be overworried; I used to be, but not since his letter came, ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... prospect of college fame. Nor does he fail to please the youthful aspirant with assurances of the kindly notice of the Faculty; he informs him of the satisfactory examination he has passed, and the gratification of the President at his uncommon proficiency; and having thus filled the buoyant imagination of his dupe with the most glowing college air-castles, dismisses him from his august presence, after having given him especial permission to call on any important occasion ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... material civilisation. And the pillars on which this incomparable structure of happiness rests—like pillars of light supporting the light—are formed of ideas of justice so exquisitely delicate, counsels of wisdom so deeply penetrating, that we of to-day, being less fine in grain, less eager and buoyant, have lost the power to formulate, or to discern, them. And for all that, this abode of felicity, that harbours a moral life so active and vigorous, so graciously grave, so noble—this palace, wherein the purest and holiest wisdom governs the pleasures of rejoicing mankind, is in its entirety ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... L'homme primigene! (He whirls round and round with dervish howls) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! (He crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his hands.) Les jeux sont faits! (The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks) Rien va plus! (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs off ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... in all this? Heaven knows. He talked and acted as if he did; and though, when I last saw him, he had smashed his banker, ruined his company, and beggared the shareholders, he was high-hearted, hopeful, and buoyant as ever. It was a general who had lost a battle, but he meant to recruit another army. It was some accidental rumour of a war—some stupid disturbance on the Danube or the Black Sea—that had frightened capital and made "money tight." The scheme itself was a glorious project—an unrivalled ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... school, I used to go home on Sundays and spend the time in frisking and dancing about. Sometimes my mother would chide me for so doing, but I did not care, for my heart was too joyous, and my spirits too buoyant, for that. Yet as the evening of Sunday came on, a sadness as of death would overtake me, for at nine o'clock I had to return to school, where everything was cold and strange and severe—where the governesses, on Mondays, lost their tempers, and nipped my ears, and made me cry. On such occasions ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... use of the natural baths by persons wilfully or negligently taking it in a totally unfit state of health, or by remaining in the water too long. When used as a bath at the natural temperature, the water is buoyant and emollient to the skin, and produces a sense of exhilaration both to the body and mind of the bather. But if indulged in too frequently or too long at one time, this beneficial effect is entirely lost, and instead of the glow of heat which ordinarily takes place directly ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... had passed their zenith I was filled with a lust for slaughter. Fish were at first the desired victims. Day after day I sat watching a hopelessly buoyant cork refuse to bob into the depths of the muddy and torpid Cuyahoga. I was like some fond parent, hoping against hope to see his child out-live the flippant period and dive beneath the surface of things, into touch with the great living realities. And when the cork finally marked a historic ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... prerequisite for a sane and untroubled existence. Even those who live in unreflective satisfaction with the fruits of the moment would find these moments less satisfactory were they not set in a background of reasonably fair promise. The exuberant optimist, when he stops to reflect, has a buoyant and inclusive faith in the essential goodness of man and the universe. Whitman stands out in this connection as the classic type. Evil and good were to him indifferently beautiful. He maintained an incredibly large-hearted and magnanimous receptivity ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... cards with the aunt as in the days of my father; and she, always there smiling, her presence filling my heart. By what road, O Providence! have you led me? What irrevocable destiny am I to accomplish? What! a life so free, an intimacy so charming, so much repose, such buoyant hope! O God! Of what do men complain? What is ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Courage, the buoyant child of Imagination, is the next faculty which we must duly cultivate, if we would use the talents God has bestowed upon us to the best advantage. It is common to look upon courage as a natural endowment, and ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... touching meeting between Edith and the others that evening. She was naturally pale and weak, but her buoyant spirit triumphed over physical defects, and she made light of her injuries. Even Fairholme was restored to a state of sanity by his brief visit, a fact that was evidenced by his quiet enjoyment of a cigar ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... Nature, the hurrying throb of the human interests it measures, there is the eternal poem of human life." In this wise, a subdued sweetness in William McNair's nature remained, which was a transfiguration of his ardent, buoyant, somewhat impulsive ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... reclaimed by his labor from the wilderness, and he should be at ease among his children. First settlers of a new country think of these things, and it is because they think of them, that their hearts are strong and buoyant with hope. They live in the future, enduring the darkness and privation of the present, in their faith in the brightness of the years to come. Thus they wait in patience for, while they command success, and the end of their toil is an old age of competence, and in the closing years of life, quiet ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... small islet that, within two miles of us, shone like a lump of frozen moonlight, to "break a crust and take a pull at the wine bottle." I was familiar with the procedure. The stout boat emptied of her crowd would nestle her buoyant, capable side against the very rock—such is the perfectly smooth amenity of the classic sea when in a gentle mood. The crust broken and the mouthful of wine swallowed—it was literally no more than that with this abstemious race—the pilots would ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... very good opinion,—especially of the Goddess of Reason. He did not know what a terrible trial was preparing for this goddess and her self-complacent worshippers. Ere long he himself was destined to lose a little of his buoyant faith in her and to become in part responsible for the apostasy of many. For the present, however, it was no inchoate Romanticism, but a publisher's enterprise, that led him into the study of the Middle Ages. He had undertaken ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... shrouded. The speechlessness of Nature environed her speechlessness. She was an enigma set in an enigma, and the two rowers looked at her and at the sunless sky, and bent to their oars gravely. A melancholy stole into their sensitive dark faces. This new padrona had already cast a shadow upon their buoyant temperaments. ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... beg shelter from the severity of the wind and rain that swept across the high ground and swooped down on the deep valleys, seeming to assail with a peculiar, conscious malice the human figure which faced them with unflinching front and the buoyant ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... a buoyant life. Carol read enviously in the admirable Minnesota chronicles called "Old Rail Fence Corners" the reminiscence of Mrs. Mahlon Black, who settled in Stillwater ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... but the bloom was paler and more delicate, and there was a fragility in her appearance which was a new and disturbing sign of diminished strength. Would she ever, even when cradled in luxuries, recover her buoyant health, her sparkling ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... London, where he was afterwards City Chronicler, married Mary Morbeck, and died; was fond of collaboration, and received assistance in his best work from Drayton, Webster, Dekker, Rowley, and Jonson; his comedies are smart and buoyant, sometimes indecorous; his masques more than usually elaborate and careful; in the comedy of "The Spanish Gypsy," and the tragedies of "The Changeling," and "Women beware Women," is found the best ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to my command in the early part of March, after a long absence as a prisoner, I was greatly depressed at the sad state of feeling in which I found almost the whole army.—The buoyant, hopeful tone that animated them during the bloody and heroic struggles in the Wilderness, and at Spotsylvania, was gone. The men who followed the immortal Jackson in his historic and eventful campaigns, and endured every fatigue and hardship without a murmur, in the full ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman
... occurred in deep water, were the bodies ever recovered. This striking fact has caused wonder-seekers to propound the most extraordinary theories to account for it. Thus one of them says, "The water of the Lake is purity itself, but on account of the highly rarified state of the air it is not very buoyant, and swimmers find some little fatigue; or, in other words, they are compelled to keep swimming all the time they are in the water; and objects which float easily in other water sink here like lead." Again he ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... no matter. I got Paulette off the island and, inch by inch, feeling my way, back to the channel where buoyant water, at least, lay under us. I twisted and turned like a corkscrew, but I dared not leave it. Once I cautioned Paulette never to try a short cut, just to keep abreast of me; and twice my heart was in my mouth at a hollow, instant-long clatter under our shoes. But we ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... interposed on any former occasion. He relaxed at intervals the rigorous imprisonment under which Perez was gasping for the breath of life, granting him for nearly a twelvemonth so much liberty as to inflate a naturally buoyant temperament with inordinate hope; but, in that very period, instigated and approved of investigations and actions at law, which resulted in reducing Perez, in so far as wealth and honours were concerned, to beggary and rags. He threw into a dungeon Pedro de Escovedo, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... bird of sombre feather, Who taught thee all the mysteries of spring?— Didst note each passing mood of wind and weather, While flying to the North on buoyant wing? ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... buzzards and, under them, in lesser circles, a broad-winged hawk. Here, at the feet of the tall, clean trees, looking up through the leafless limbs, I had something of a measure for the flight of the birds. The majesty and the mystery of the distant buoyant wings were singularly impressive. ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Russell. These atrocities and the trials at Old Bailey, no doubt, gave my mind the bent for the criminal law, not that I was in any sense conscious of the possession of superior powers. It was merely the selective tendency of a fresh and buoyant mind, rather vigorous than contemplative, and in which the desire for a special field of action is ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... can enjoy a joke, particularly on the Germans, and her cheerful smile and genuine laugh are a lesson to all people who draw long faces in time of trouble and weep over spilt milk. A buoyant temperament and unshaken faith carried her through her ordeal. Though her hair is white, youth's optimism and confidence in the future and the joy of victory for France overshadowed the present. The town and church would be rebuilt; children would ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... knew how it would be,' said Dumps, as he turned round opposite the Mansion-house at half-past eleven o'clock on the Friday morning. 'I knew how it would be. I am concerned, and that's enough;'—and certainly the appearance of the day was sufficient to depress the spirits of a much more buoyant-hearted individual than himself. It had rained, without a moment's cessation, since eight o'clock; everybody that passed up Cheapside, and down Cheapside, looked wet, cold, and dirty. All sorts of forgotten and long-concealed umbrellas had been put into requisition. Cabs whisked about, with ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a very exhilarating effect on my spirits. I know not whether others experience the same pleasurable sensations that I do on a fine day in spring, when all nature is bursting into life, and the air and earth look joyous. My feelings become more buoyant, my step more elastic, and all that I love seem dearer than before. I remember that even in childhood I was peculiarly sensible to atmospheric influence, and I find that as I grow old ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... arose, fresh and vigorous. He was cheerful and buoyant that day; he was to graduate bedecked with all the honors of his class. Mr. King, his benefactor, was to be present. His mother had saved up her scant earnings and had come to see her son wind up the career on which she had ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... crowded colonies. I coveted surroundings that should be primitive—an atmosphere in which my thoughts could speak to me coherent. I would be as one in a cave, looking forth on sea, and sky, and the buoyant glory of Nature; unvexed of conventions; untrammelled by social observances; building up my enchanted palace of the imagination against such a background as only the unsullied majesty of sky and ocean could present. For the result was to crown with my name an epoch in literature; ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... young man—one would have guessed that the ink was scarcely dry on his diploma. He had a determined mouth, a square chin, kind eyes, and the buoyant youthful courage that, by itself, carries one far ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... a posterity distant by five centuries, to overlap the gulf of years between the point of starting—the absolute now of commencement and the remote generation at which you take aim. Trust to tradition, not to the counsel of one man. But tradition is buoyant. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... time I thank the strange fate which sent that lifeboat hurtling upward from the green pit of destruction to which it had been dragged—sent it far up above the surface, emptying its water as it rose above the waves, and dropping it upon the surface of the sea, buoyant ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... recall his parents, peasants in the highlands, who being too poor or too avaricious to support him had deserted him in the forest. The third, Sulpice, knew nothing of his birth, but a priest had taught him his alphabet. The storm had ceased; in the buoyant, limpid air the birds were calling loudly to one another. The smiling earth was green. Modernus having fetched the mules, Bishop Nicolas mounted his, and carried Maxime wrapped in his cloak: the deacon took Sulpice and ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... But the thing they meant to do, they did unfalteringly; and perfect workmanship is in itself a virtue in this world of shoddy compromise and ragged effort. Long after people have ceased to care for battle, murder, and sudden death, the thrill and urge of buoyant adventure, they will re-read the boyish tales of Stevenson for the sake of their swiftness of propulsion and ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... ceremonies. From a mysterious box he produced all kinds of quaint conserves, and the menu soared to unknown delicacies like "Potage a la Suisse, Choucroute garnie aux saucission de Berne, Puree de foie gras trufee, and Leckerley de Bale." Hanging above the buoyant assembly were the Cross of Helvetia and the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... privileged place on a footstool beside him. From the first sight she had been his favourite, he said, because of her resemblance to Muriel. But I think, more than any fancied likeness to that sweet lost face, which he never spoke of without tenderness inexpressible, there was something in Maud's buoyant youth—just between childhood and girlhood, having the charms of one and the immunities of the other—which was especially attractive to this man, who, at three-and-thirty, found life a weariness and a burthen—at ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... old flint and steel, but the sparks were not bright enough to light the tinder of emotion. She knew it, for he was cool and buoyant and really unconcerned, and she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... him they would see the moon-path. They must set off downhill. He felt her arm clasped firmly, joyously, round his waist. Therein was his stability and warm support. Siegmund felt a keen flush of pitiful tenderness for her as she walked with buoyant feet beside him, clasping him so happily, all unconscious. This pity for her drew him ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... easily indeed. He had talked with eloquence and feeling about the miseries and humiliations of a peerage inadequately endowed with money, but no traces of his sufferings were visible to Thorpe's observant eye. The nobleman himself looked the very image of contented prosperity—handsome, buoyant, light-hearted, and, withal, the best-groomed man in London. And this ancestral home of his—or of his mother's, since he seemed to insist upon the distinction—where were its signs of a stinted income? The place ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... refuse to see him! No, he was sure she was sick; and besides, she could not have heard of his coming. So he soothed himself. But the imps of suspicion and jealousy still haunted him at intervals, and a more miserable man than the usually buoyant and sanguine Mark it would be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... heave up a reef, where mightiest keels Are stranded, and the powers of man put down. The water-drop wears out the stone; and cares Trifling, if ceaseless, form an aggregate, Whose burden weighs the buoyant heart to earth. Think not the right path may be safely left, Though 'twere but for one moment, and one step; That one departure, slight howe'er it be, From Innocence is nought. The young peach-bloom, Rudely brushed off, can be restored no more, By all the cunning of the painter's art; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... amused at the way Betty took full possession of everything in the place. There was nothing forward about her, for she seemed more like a grown-up woman than a girl. He admired her confident and buoyant manner, as well as the thoughtful and deferential way she looked after the old man. The best on the table was for him and he had to be served first. She treated him sometimes as a child, but more often as a superior being. He noted the look of reverential respect in her eyes ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... they called forth were not pleasurable ones; for oh! how rudely and frequently, on the other hand, are we reminded of the changes which the progress of years brings with it: the bereavement of loved ones—the prostration of what we revered—our buoyant elasticity of body and mind ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Tower of Sight, but even more ravishingly sweet. This time what I felt was the sensation of pure sound: sound, not merely heard, but, as before in the case of light, apprehended at once by every avenue of sense, and folding and sustaining, as it seemed, my whole being in a clear and buoyant element of tone. It was only by degrees that out of this absolute essence of sheer sound distinctions of rhythm and pitch began to appear, and to assume definite musical form. The theme at first was pastoral and sweet, suggestive of rustling grasses and ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... friends. She had forgotten about Americanizing him, but she found him charming, with the fresh frank abandon of the unspoiled south-European. She liked his open admiration, she enjoyed his mature cynicism, she reveled in his buoyant enthusiasm. She had not believed that such opposing elements could dwell in one small person. In Angelo, she found them, and she found the ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... dotted Ocean: on it flew Like to the shadow of a roused sea-mew; Onward it came—and, lo! a second followed— Now seen—now hid—where Ocean's vale was hollowed; 170 And near, and nearer, till the dusky crew Presented well-known aspects to the view, Till on the surf their skimming paddles play, Buoyant as wings, and flitting through the spray;— Now perching on the wave's high curl, and now Dashed downward in the thundering foam below, Which flings it broad and boiling sheet on sheet, And slings ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Dean came riding in one glad June morning, bronzed, and tanned, and buoyant, and tossed his reins to the orderly who trotted at his heels, while the troop dismounted and watered at the stream, Mrs. Folsom's heart was gladdened by his confident and joyous bearing. Twice, thrice he had ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... to go back to the lady, to ease her apparent anxiety as to the result of his mission, and also because time seemed heavy in the loss of her discreet voice and soft, buoyant look. Every moment of delay began to be as two. But the minister was too earnest in his converse to see his companion's haste, and it was not till perception was forced upon him by the actual retreat of Somerset that he ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... music, they felt the vessel stir. Orpheus thrummed away briskly, and the galley slid at once into the sea, dipping her prow so deeply that the figure-head drank the wave with its marvelous lips, and rising again as buoyant as a swan. The rowers plied their fifty oars; the white foam boiled up before the prow; the water gurgled and bubbled in their wake; while Orpheus continued to play so lively a strain of music, that ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I dined quietly with Brinsley FitzGerald at the Ritz, and here it was curious to observe how Paris, like Dover, had put on a sombre garb of war. The buoyant, optimistic nature of the French people was apparent in the few we met; but there was no bombastic, over-confident tone in the conversation around us; only a quiet, but grim, determination which fully appreciated the tremendous difficulties and gigantic issues at stake. The false ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... would put to shame the most inveterate grumbler. Her buoyant spirits were infectious. Her ringing, merry laugh was cheering to the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... at the early age of forty. His life was full of misfortunes, but we can scarcely say that he was unhappy, for nothing could conquer his buoyant spirit. At one time he was actually in prison, for what was deemed a libellous attack, but we are told that he obtained his "enlargement" from it, upon his writing the following Pindaric Petition to the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... beginning to forget fear. The stallion danced lightly forward, and as the wind struck the face of Bull Hunter he suddenly rejoiced. This was what he had dreamed of, to be carried thus lightly, easily. The weight that had crushed other horses was nothing to Diablo. It made him feel buoyant. He became tinglingly alert. On the back of Diablo not a horse of the mountains could overtake him if he fled; and not a man of the mountains could escape him if he pursued on the back of ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... he was out of sight, and although the vigorous, rhythmic swing of his broad shoulders was like another manifestation of the morning's joyous, buoyant spirit, it did not move her to a responsive alertness. After he had turned a corner, she lowered her eyes to the cluster of grapes she still held; a moment after, without any change in expression, she relaxed her grasp on them and let them fall, turning ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Scribner's Magazine. This novel is not only a great advance on 'The Little Minister' in symmetry of construction, reality of matter, tragic power, and insight, but its tone is very different. Though as rich in humor, the humor is largely of a grim, bitter, and sardonic sort. The light, gay, buoyant fun of 'The Little Minister,' which makes it a perpetual enjoyment, has mostly vanished; in its stead we feel that the writer's sensitive nature is wrung by the swarming catastrophes he cannot avert, the endless wrecks ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... describe its peculiar dress; her cap plain, but white as snow; and a black silk gown, that had seen its best days, was pinned and primmed on, so as to sit as close as possible to a figure which would have been greatly improved by heavy and abundant drapery. Mabel, lithe and restless, buoyant and energetic, unable even to wish for more luxury or more happiness than she possessed, so that her active mind was forced to employ its longings on trifles, as it really had nothing else to ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... was not without its effect upon Ella. Naturally of a tender, affectionate, and sympathetic disposition, she could not feel at ease when another was suffering, and particularly when that other was one standing so high in her estimation as Algernon Reynolds. Naturally, too, possessing light and buoyant spirits—fond of gaiety where all were gay—she exhibited on the present occasion the effect of two strong but counteracting passions. Her features, if we may be allowed the comparison, were like ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... remained to the last hours of his short life. But in spite of a happy marriage, the burden and perplexity of philosophic thought, together with the strain of failing health, checked, before long, the strong poetic impulse shown in the "Bothie," its buoyant delight in natural beauty, and in the simplicities of human feeling and passion. The "music" of ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enchanted isles of youth. Is it the instinctive effort to prolong the brilliancy of youth that induces the advancing woman to decorate herself so brightly? Is it the involuntary hope that she will really seem to be buoyant and gay of heart if only her dress be gay? As they go trooping by I mark that richly caparisoned dowager, and I recall the days when I was merely an attache of the embassy, and when in the modest parlor ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... men. Huanami cut one of the rushes for Earle's inspection, and dividing it up into short lengths, showed that it was a bamboo-like growth, hollow in structure and divided into a series of watertight compartments by partitions occurring at every notch, rendering it exceedingly light and buoyant. The average length of the rushes was about twelve feet, but by a kind of interlacing system a raft, or balsa, of almost any required dimensions could ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... buoyant were Dorothy's spirits, and so light-hearted and genuine her outlook on things in general, that Douglas began to wonder if the events of the previous evening were not, after all, the imaginings of ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... secure, Secure from prowling weazel, or the tread Of steed incautious, wandering 'mid the flowers? Secure beneath the fostering care of her Who warm'd you into life, and gave you birth; Till, plumed and strong unto the buoyant air, Ye spread your equal wings, and to the morn, Lifting your freckled bosoms, dew-besprent, Salute with spirit-stirring song, the man Wayfaring lonely. Hark! the striderous neigh! There, o'er his dogrose fence, the chestnut foal, Shaking his silver forelock, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... Rochefoucauld. The union of the philosopher, the enthusiast, and the man of the world is fairly unusual in literature, but in Hazlitt's case the union was not productive of any sharp contradictions. His common sense served as a ballast to his buoyant emotions; the natural strength of his feelings loosened the bonds which attached him to his favorite theories; his cynicism, by sharpening his perception of the frailty of human nature, prevented his philanthropic dreams from imposing ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... night, near the close of winter, Traverse lay awake on his sofa-bedstead, turning over in his mind how he should contrive to make both ends meet at the conclusion of the present term and feeling as near despondency as it was possible for his buoyant and God-trusting soul to be, when there came a loud ringing at his ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... forthwith. The author waited no longer now, but started for St. Louis, and was soon with his mother and sister, whom he had not seen since that eventful first year of the war. They thought he looked old, which was true enough, but they found him unchanged in his manner: buoyant, full of banter and gravely quaint remarks—he was always the same. Jane Clemens had grown older, too. She was nearly sixty-four, but as keen and vigorous as ever-proud (even if somewhat critical) of this handsome, brilliant man of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... springs of youth were in full flood, and the tide ran strong in his rich veins. A passionate enthusiasm was the outlet for this tide. A buoyant, fearless energy, a youthful pride in strenuous achievement. It was with these he faced the bitterness of the cruel Northland which he had grown to look upon like the Indians, who knew no better, as the whole setting of human ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... untempered air was like wine, and out of a blue sky the sun beat pleasantly down through a crystal-clear atmosphere known only to the region of the Rockies. Nature was preaching a wordless sermon on the duty of happiness to two buoyant hearts that scarce ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... guests of "Wake Robin" were driven indoors. Olga, when she wasn't playing auction, wandered from window to window, looking out at the dreary skies, venting her ennui on anyone within earshot. Archie Westcott, who was losing more money than he could afford to lose, now lacked the buoyant spirits which carried him so blithely along the crest of the social wave and scowled gloomily at his cards which persisted in favoring his opponents. Crosby Downs, whose waistband had again reached its fullest tension, sought the tall grasses of the smoking-room ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... hypothymic or cyclothymic to the little affairs of life and to the minor illnesses. Yet when her family fortunes were greatly imperilled by a financial crisis, she stood up against the strain far better than did her husband, a man sturdy and buoyant in most of the affairs of life. His ego was more concerned with financial fortune than was hers, and against this ill she was the ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... to Annie a cessation of her purpose. She was languid, subject to whimsical desires and appetites, at times a prey to sudden nervous tears. The household work slipped back into Aunt Dolcey's faithful hands, save now and then when Annie felt more buoyant and instinct with life and energy than she had ever felt before. Then she would weed her garden or churn and print a dozen rolls of butter with a keen and vivid delight in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... presently conversed with his hostess. Mrs. Frothingham's sanguine and buoyant temper seemed proof against fatigue; at home or as a guest she wore the same look of enjoyment; vexations, rivalries, responsibilities, left no trace upon her beaming countenance. Her affections were numberless; her ignorance, as an observer easily discovered, was ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... any one of the family. Somehow, my heart felt less heavy. I believe the morning always brings relief to pain, either mental or bodily. It seems to be a law of nature—at least, so my experience tells me. The morning air, buoyant and balmy, dulls the edge of anguish. New hopes arise and new projects appear with the sun. The invalid, couch-tossing through the long watches of the night, will acknowledge ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... horse's head east, and always find a day with Nature so exalts and uplifts my whole being that life, again is filled with the calm, clear star of hope, and that my burden of care falls to the dust under my horse's feet; my spirit is again buoyant; I again live. And what have you both, my charming home angels, been about? you look yet as if a sun-warm bath would be your ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... in Fortune's spite; Dark mornings often change to bright; Ne'er shall this omen harm a wight So active and so clever. How buoyant, how elastic thou! With a lamp halo round thy brow, Prophetic Magog dubs thee ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... sat very still and sad, bending over her needlework without ever turning her head in the direction of the door. True, he wrote to her every week. No Wednesday ever passed without bringing her a letter written in a strong, buoyant and encouraging strain. Still she missed Traverse very sadly. It was dreary to rise up in the empty house every morning; dreary to sit down to her solitary meals, and drearier still to go to bed in her lonely room without having received her boy's kiss and ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Here was competition when least expected; and that too by a party already in the advance, who were driving the game before them. Captain Bonneville had now a taste of the sudden transitions to which a trapper's life is subject. The buoyant confidence in an uninterrupted hunt was at an end; every countenance lowered ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... from which he looked at every subject, was marvelous even in a century so fertile of varied independences: he complained that "the most galling of yokes is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor," the obligation of thinking as he thinks. He had a keen, almost reckless wit and delicious buoyant humor, whose utterances never pall by repetition; few authors so abound in tenaciously quotable phrases and passages of humorous intellectuality. What is rarely found in connection with much humor, he had a sensitive ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various |
