"Effortless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day, the forward partition of the new cabin, fitting his boards meticulously, and driving home each nail with hammer strokes that seemed smooth and effortless, yet sank the nail to the head in an instant. He looked up over his ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... slaughter'd, where o'er his uncoffin'd limbs The flocking flesh-birds scream'd! Then, while thy heart 10 Groans, and thine eye a fiercer sorrow dims, Know (and the truth shall kindle thy young mind) What Nature makes thee mourn, she bids thee heal! O abject! if, to sickly dreams resign'd, All effortless thou leave Life's commonweal 15 A prey to Tyrants, Murderers ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... street they turn to the right hand or the left, hesitate or hurry in crossing the road, recognise and act upon the bicycle bell and the cabman's shout, by using the same process of inference to guide the same group of impulses. Their inferences are for the most part effortless, though sometimes they will both be seen to pause until they have settled some point by wordless deliberation. It is only when a decision has to be taken affecting the more distant purposes of his life that the man enters on ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... theory, in a recent article, seems to me to express it in the most favorable way. Beauty is again connected with the functioning of our organs of perception (Auffassungorgane). "We wish to be put into a fresh, lively, energetic and yet at the same time effortless activity.... The pleasure in form is a pleasure in this, that the conformation of the object makes possible or rather compels a natural purposeful functioning of our apprehending organs." But purposeful for what? For visual form, ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... the fishbowl helmet. Running four hundred yards isn't the easiest thing in the world, even if a man is in good physical condition. There was less weight to contend with, but the mass that had to be pushed along remained the same. The notion that running on Luna was an effortless breeze was one that only ...
— The Bramble Bush • Gordon Randall Garrett
... tools. Unfortunately, the knowledge of how to use hand tools has largely disappeared. No one has a farm-bred grandfather to show them how easy it is to use a sharp shovel or how impossibly hard it can be to drive a dull one into the soil. Similarly, weeding with a sharp hoe is effortless and fast. But most new hoes are sold without even a proper bevel ground into the blade, much less with an edge that has been carefully honed. So after working with dull shovels and hoes, many home food ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... with careful precision as to the accents of her German, in a high breathy effortless soprano, a little song about a child and a bouquet ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... reserved for games some boys were playing baseball with much hoarse hooting and frenzied action. He drew near to watch. The ball, misdirected, sailed suddenly toward him. He ran backward at its swift approach, leaped high, caught it, and with a long curving swing, so easy as to appear almost effortless, sent it hurtling back. The lad on the pitcher's mound made as if to catch it, changed his ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... with strong muscles above, and going in, tight, with a magnificent dip at the waist; all impressions were merged in a sense of ease, of suavity, of full-blown harmony. Here was no pomp of anatomical lore, of cunning handicraft, but the life seemed to circulate strong and gentle in this exquisite effortless body. And the creature was not merely alive with a life more harmonious than that of living men or carved marbles, but beautiful, equally in simple outline if you chose that, and in subtle detail when that came under ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... be discerned in habit is economy. Habitual acts do not have to be actively directed by consciousness. While they are being performed, consciousness may be otherwise engaged. "The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work." While you are brushing your hair or tying your shoes, your mind may be engaged in memorizing poetry or calculating arithmetical problems. ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... an effortless platitude, "liking is the great mystery—whether you take its coming or ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... and lazed and listened to Miss Van Arsdale's music, or read, or took little walks between showers. No further mention was made by her hostess of the circumstances of the visit. She was a reticent woman; almost saturnine, Io decided, though her perfect and effortless courtesy preserved her from being antipathetic to any one beneath her own roof. How much her silence as to the unusual situation was inspired by consideration for her guest, how much due to natural ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... one-sidedness talked about the way by which Christian character is to be developed and perfected. And one set of the New Testament metaphors upon that subject has been pressed to the exclusion of the others, and the effortless growth of the plant has been presented as if it were the complete example of Christian progress. I know that Jesus Christ has said: 'First the blade, then the ear; after that the full corn in the ear.' But I know that He has also said, 'Which of you, intending to build a tower'—and that involves ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sweet messages of the ardent spring that smiles over Eastern lands. This was a world of young rapture, not careless, but softly intense with joy. All things animate and inanimate were surely singing a love-song, effortless because it flowed from the very core of a heart ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Tranquil and effortless thou glidest on, As doth the swan upon the yielding water, And with a cheek like alabaster cold! But as thou didst divide the amorous air Just opposite the Astor, and didst lift That vail of languid lashes to look in ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... was restored to her peace; lifted up and swept, effortless, into the place of heavenly help. Anne's soul had no longer to reach out her hand and feel her way to God, for it was God who sought for her and found her. She heard behind her, as it were, the footsteps of the divine pursuing power. Once more, as in the mystic days before her marriage, ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... girl. His wife was dead, and the child was being brought up by his sisters. He regretted the streets, the pavements, the cafes, his friends of many years; all the things he used to see, day after day; all the thoughts suggested by familiar things—the thoughts effortless, monotonous, and soothing of a Government clerk; he regretted all the gossip, the small enmities, the mild venom, and the little jokes of Government offices. "If I had had a decent brother-in-law," Carlier would remark, "a fellow ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... influence and magic were not good. Even in May, when the lilacs frothed into purple, paved the lawn with shadows, steeped the air with scent; when soft leaves lipped each other consolingly; when blackbirds sang, fell in their effortless way from the green height to the green depth, and sang again—still, something that haunted the place set the heart fluttering. No place is its own, and that which is most stained with old tumults has ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... attention, or, rather, to have my heart held, without wavering, upon the one supreme reality, the sheer fact of God. These are the moments that I feel to be true worship. These are the times when the effort to have faith is superseded by an effortless assurance born of actual experience. God's reality is felt in every fibre of the soul and brings ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... noblest work, the large altar-piece, dated 1522, his forty-fifth year, of SS. Nazaro e Celso, at Brescia, is certainly a religious—a great, religious painter. The famous Gabriel of the Annunciation, aflight, in all the effortless energy of an angel indeed, and Sebastian, adapted, it was said, from an ancient statue, yet as novel in design as if Titian had been the first to handle that so familiar figure in old religious art—may represent for us a vast and varied amount of work—in which he ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the sense of touching Reality at its highest point in a secure and effortless consummation; so far were you from being strung up ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... all things made by man. There is a close connexion between the idea of life expressed in Aristotle's ideal man and the later Greek sculpture. The aim of that sculpture, as of his ideal man, was proud and effortless perfection. Both dread the confession of failure above all things—and both are dull. In Aristotle's age art had started upon a long decline, which ended only when the pretence of perfection was killed, both ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... Secretly, perhaps, neither of us wanted to give the other a chance by stooping for a heavy girl; I knew I was not going to do it. But Paulette must have feared I was. She sprang past me and lifted Marcia with smooth, effortless strength, as if ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... this personage to make her very curious; and her eyes took keen note of him. She saw a tall, upright figure, with that free poise of bearing which is a compound of strength and ease; effortless, quiet, graceful, and dignified. Though in part the result of a certain symmetry of joints and practised activity in the use of them, this sort of bearing refers itself also, and yet more surely, to ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... never see these things properly, face to face; they always kept just out of the line of vision, like shadows that follow a lonely walker in a wood and vanish the moment he turns to look at them over his shoulder. But ever by his side, with a steady, effortless motion, he knew they kept up with him—strange inhabitants of the airless heights, immense and misty-winged, with veiled, flaming eyes and silent feathers. He was not afraid of them; for they were ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... then, a natural tendency in the light to blossom out into all forms and types of goodness. 'Fruit' suggests the idea of natural, silent, spontaneous, effortless growth. And, although that is by no means a sufficient account of the process by which bad men become good men, it is an inseparable element, in all true moral renovation, that it be the natural outcome and manifestation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... feet. It was an impressively effortless motion. There was a thick wide torso on short thick legs under the golden fur. The structure was gorilla-like. Pilli might weigh around ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... unequal footsteps on the empty street. Cosgrave and Connie Edwards nodded to one another and took hands and were gone. Francey, too, slipped to her feet. She gathered up her hat and coat, her silence effortless. She did not so much as glance at Robert, but at the head of the steep, ladder-like ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... happiness or the sorrow of others. In his life he had never before believed that the command to love one's neighbour had in it anything more significant than the beauty of an immortal theory. He believed it now because, in her, he had seen it in effortless practice. He was even beginning to understand how it might be possible for him to follow where she led—as she, unconsciously, was a follower of a precept given to lead the world ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... began for Bessie Lonsdale that fantastic ride in which she felt herself being carried forward, as if on the effortless wings of fate itself, to the very scene ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... year of Boom-town's existence, and Seagraves had not yet grown restless under its monotony. Around him the gophers played saucily. Teams were moving here and there across the sod, with a peculiar noiseless, effortless motion that made them seem as calm, lazy, and unsubstantial as the mist through which they made their way; even the sound of passing wagons was a sort ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... aboard his raft with all his earthly possessions bestowed about him, awaiting the rains and freshets that were to waft him effortless into a newer country where he should have a white man's chance. At last the rains came, and he cast off from the bank at that unsalubrious spot where his father had elected to build his cabin on a strip of level bottom subject to periodic inundation. Wishing ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... to it that who or what you touch gives you strength, not weakness; uplifts, not debases. The aspiring athlete does not seek to match his strength against inferiors. These give him- -easy victory. Contact with them is for him effortless; they tend to draw him to their plane. Rather, being wise, he shuns them to pit his prowess against such as can give him best, from whom he may learn, out of whom he will take virtue, by whom he ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... modeled with extraordinary speed, yet his movements had none of the lightning swoops and darts of Stefan's method. Each motion of his powerful hands might have been preordained; they seemed to move with a deliberate and effortless precision, so that she would hardly have realized their speed had the head and face not leaped under them into being. He was a silent worker, yet she felt companioned; the man's presence seemed to fill the ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... curves; and to Milt it was pure beauty, it was release from life, to soar up coaxing inclines and slip down easy grades in the powerful car. "No more Teals for me," he cried, in the ecstasy of handling an engine that slowed to a demure whisper, then, at a touch of the accelerator, floated up a rise, effortless, joyous, humming the booming song of the joy in speed. He suddenly hated the bucking tediousness of the Teal. The Gomez-Dep symbolized ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... has nevertheless abandoned, so fearless about letting his whole case come out, so careless about putting himself in the right in detail; which is so calm, and kindly, and measured, with such a quiet effortless freedom from the stings of old conflicts, which bears so few traces of that bitterness and antipathy which generally—and we need hardly wonder at it—follows the decisive breaking with that on which a man's heart was stayed, and for which he would ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... that time been dead in me, it might have been pain to me to watch him accomplish unswervingly with his effortless genius the things I had once dreamt I, too, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... There were clear marks of violence. I found the old man's body in the moonlight Hanging beneath the window of his chamber, Among the branches of a pine: he could not Have fallen there, for all his limbs lay heaped 75 And effortless; 'tis true there was no blood... Favour me, Sir; it much imports your house That all should be made clear; to tell the ladies That I request ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... as the most trite and feeble of tragedies, one of those stories of effortless submission to chance and custom in which Mr. Hardy or George Gissing might have found a theme. I do but half listen at first—watching the black figures in the moonlit roadway pacing to and fro. Yet—I cannot trace how he ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... stepping forward, his arms hidden under his long cloak as they hung down quietly, the smile on his face broadening somewhat, sent from his chest a mighty, effortless ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... the ranked fours swing off, turn out into the road, and go tramping down between the poplars. There has been no flurry, no hustle, no confusion. The whole thing has moved with the smoothness and precision and effortless ease of a properly adjusted, well-oiled machine—which, after all, is just what the regiment is. The pace is apparently leisurely, or even lazy, but it eats up the miles amazingly, and it can be kept up with the shortest of halts from ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... went back to her guests, and with the effortless ease of long training, she became once more the gracious and tactful hostess. But in her heart, the fear had grown a little stronger, and a specter walked by her side. Once during the evening, her husband looked at her questioningly, and she breathed ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... woman. But beneath the genuine relief and satisfaction of the men there stirred vaguely the thought of the mysteriousness of women, of the entire female sex. Mrs. Haim, charwoman, was just as mysterious as any other woman. As for George, despite the exhilaration which he could feel rising in him effortless and unsought, he was preoccupied by more than women's mysteriousness; the conception of destiny lingered and faintly troubled him. It was as though he had been walking on a clear path through a vast and empty ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... ill luck of starting a piece of literary work wrong-and again and again; always aware that there is a way, if you could only think it out, which would make the thing slide effortless from the pen —the one right way, the sole form for you, the other forms being for men whose line those forms are, or who are capabler than yourself: I've had no end of experience in that (and maybe I am the only one—let us hope so.) Last summer I started ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... imagination, which was so creative, worked so easily and without effort that he was not aware of its activity, and moreover, his fundamental ideas were so clear that everything fell into lines spontaneously without his being conscious of it later. This "working'' of the imagination is so effortless to fortunate natures that it becomes an ordinary movement. Thus Goethe tells of an imaginary flower which broke into its elements, united again, broke again, and united in another form, etc. His story reveals one of the reasons for the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... possess an effortless knack of commanding attention and inspiring courtesy. Calvin Gray was one of these. Before many moments, he was in the manager's office, explaining, suavely, "Now that I have introduced myself, I wish to thank you for taking care of ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of effortless adoration may be a religion for an angel but never for a man. Not in the contemplative, but in the active, lies true hope; not in rapture, but in reality, lies true life; not in the realm of ideals, but ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... in a moment of exhaustion. It lay there, prone and motionless, a sprawling emblem of despair. And aloft, high up, as though in subtle mockery of the poor human endeavour below, a sea-bird soared with wings atilt, sweeping with effortless grace towards the ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the stranger, in the land of our foes. Let his feet, in his youth, climb the green holts of England;—let his eyes, resin dims them, drink the blue of her skies! When this shall reach thee, thou in thy calm, effortless strength, wilt be more great than Godwin our father. Power came to him with travail and through toil, the geld of craft and of force. Power is born to thee as strength to the strong man; it gathers around thee as thou movest; it is not thine ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to stretch one's cramped wings to the sun, to ruffle and spread them, as a released bird will, but it was startling to find already little stiff habits arisen, little creaks and hindrances never suspected, that made flight in the high air not quite effortless and serene. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... what one asks of life. What should a free state in this modern world guarantee to all its citizens? Not that equality of condition for which many in our days plead, the dead level of insured and effortless comfort, but equality of opportunity, a free and fair chance for every man to be and to do his best. That land is best governed where the door of opportunity stands wide open to the humblest of its citizens, so that ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... self-knowledge had vanished. To get out of the uproar and confusion of things, I had often fancied, would be like exchanging the dusty midsummer road for the shade of the woods where the brook calms the day with its pellucid note of effortless flow, and the hours hide themselves from the glances of the sun. In the forest of Arden I felt sure I should find the repose, the quietude, the freedom of thought, which would permit me to know myself. There, too, I suspected Nature had certain surprises for me; certain secrets which she has been ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... wild life that I see is all on wings. There are the tranquil, effortless gliding herring gulls, snow-white beneath and pearl-gray above, displaying an affluence of wing-power restful to look upon—airplanes that put forth their powers so subtly and so silently as to elude both eye and ear. At low tide I see large groups of their white and gray-blue ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... a flounce. She made no motion to withdraw it or to move away, and glancing up at her he saw there were tears in her eyes. As he looked they slipped over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. She made no effort to stay them, nor did she sob—she cried with the effortless sorrow ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... softly, agreeably; and the next moment Dolores hailed them. She swam swiftly, with effortless ease, slipping through the sea like a sparkling nymph in her native element. But the schooner traveled fast, and, though she lost no ground, she gained ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle |
