"Verve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... subject not one mind, but several; he becomes not one poet, but many; for each actor in his drama has a share, and an important share, in the lyrical estro to which he gives birth. This it is which has imparted any verve, variety, or dramatic character they possess, to the ballads contained in this production. Turpin I look upon as the real songster of "Black Bess;" to Jerry Juniper I am unquestionably indebted for a flash melody which, without his hint, would ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... art had the defects of its qualities. Its spiritual ecstasy once conventionalized and reduced to a formula led to unreality, and, if not to untruth, at least to an unwholesome ignoring of a part of truth. There was, therefore, an inevitable reaction to the naturalism described with such verve and gusto by Fra Lippo Lippi. But this is, after all, social history in terms of art, and to Browning what has happened in painting is of value chiefly as showing concretely what has happened ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... little verve into this thing!' he roars; an' pullin' his guns he begins shakin' the loads out of 'em ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... affinity between the two men. My mother, who was greatly attached to Francis Balfour, said once to Sir M. Foster, "He has not got the dash and verve, but otherwise he reminds me curiously of what my husband was in his 'Rattlesnake' days." "How strange," replied Sir Michael, "when he first came to the front, Lankester wrote asking me, 'Who is this man Balfour you are always talking about?' and I answered, 'Well, I ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... visible in all their distinctness from the beginning, as all those who have read the introductory chapters will readily admit. And the same lines were to be followed with an undeviating fixity of artistic purpose and with unfailing verve and spirit to the last. 'The Prodigious Adventures of Tartarin,' 'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Port-Tarascon,' form a trilogy; and I know of no other example in modern French literature of so long and so well sustained a joke. How is it then that we never grow tired ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... that morning with much verve and vigor. It was a pleasant morning: the windows were open; the schoolrooms were all well ventilated; the teachers, the best of their kind, were stimulating in their lectures and in their conversation. There was a look ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... songs: "There be none of Beauty's daughters," "She walks in beauty," "Maid of Athens," "I enter thy garden of roses," the translation "Sons of the Greeks," and others, have a flow and verve that it is pedantry to ignore; but in general Byron was too much of the earth earthy to be a great lyrist. Some of the greatest have lived wild lives, but their wings were not weighted with the lead of the love ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Cockaigne has been crowning A Poet whose garland endures;— It was you that first told me of Browning,— That stupid old Browning of yours! His vogue and his verve are alarming, I'm anxious to give him his due; But, Fred, he's not nearly so charming ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... the air ring with shrill "Vive's." There were not many of them, only three companies. The men looked trim and clean-cut. They were tall and husky-looking and the snap with which they walked was good to the eyes of old Paris that loves verve. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... spent at the theaters and ended at Tortoni's with this truest of "boulevardiers," who knew every one and everything, and whose inexhaustible fund of anecdote was enlivened by a spontaneous easy wit and verve that ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... woman of all work waited spasmodically upon the table; she proved to be Lugene, none other than the girl Hen and Cally had found on Dunbar Street, that day long ago.... Old times; so, too, when the Major told with accustomed verve how papa, a little shaver then, had brought the note from Aunt Molly down to camp, fifty ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... few other French words which like 'prestige' are at this moment hovering on the verge of English, hardly knowing whether they shall become such, or no. Such are 'ennui', 'exploitation', 'verve', 'persiflage', 'badinage', 'chicane', 'finesse', and others; all of them often employed by us,—and it is out of such frequent employment that adoption proceeds,—because expressing shades of meaning not expressed by any words of our own{67}. Some of these, we may confidently anticipate, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... originality; invention; fancy; inspiration; verve. warm imagination, heated imagination, excited imagination, sanguine imagination, ardent imagination, fiery imagination, boiling imagination, wild imagination, bold imagination, daring imagination, playful imagination, lively imagination, fertile imagination, fancy. mind's eye; such stuff as dreams ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... known, contemporaries attacked not only the inferior officers, but the judges themselves. Complaints of great abuses were loud and long,[190] and when the ecclesiastical courts were abolished by the Long Parliament in 1641,[191] the satirical literature of the day celebrated their downfall with a verve, a gusto, and an exultation amazing to one not familiar with ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... contrary, presented the Benthamic doctrines in the most startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to consequences offensive to anyone's preconceived feelings. All which, he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a manner so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came off victor, or divided the honours of the field. It is my belief that much of the notion popularly entertained of the tenets and sentiments of what are called ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... answered, with her old verve, "get out o' the house, man, and leave me to my work while ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... were a wild lot ... something like European peasants in their smacking of the soil and the country to which they belonged, but with a verve and dash of their ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... even of the boisbrules had much of the heaviness and stolidity of their native mothers. Jessie McRae was graceful as a fawn. Every turn of the dark head, every lift of the hand, expressed spirit and verve. She must, he thought, have inherited almost wholly from her father, though in her lissom youth he could find little of McRae's heavy solidity of mind ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... rather a tiresome way, and his phrases were conventional and pietistic. I used to feel that he jarred a good deal on Father Payne, but much was forgiven him because of his musical talents, which were really remarkable. His organ-playing, with its verve, its delicacy, and its quiet mastery, was delicious to hear, he was engaged in writing music mainly, and had a piano all to himself in a little remote room beyond the dining-room, which looked out to the stable-yard ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... more critical Ernest Poole suffers from a deficiency of both verve and humor. He began his career with the happy discovery of a picturesque, untrodden neighborhood of New York City in The Harbor; he consolidated his reputation with the thoughtful study of a troubled ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... is undoubtedly the best known of Aphra Behn's comedies. It long remained a popular favourite in the theatre, its verve, bustle and wit, utterly defiant of the modest Josephs and qualmy prudes who censured these lively scenes. Steele has mention of this in an archly humorous paper, No. 51, Spectator, Saturday, 28 April, 1711. He pictures a young lady who has taken offence at some negligent ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... in the manners of 'bus conductors, waiters, salesmen, chance acquaintances, in the tone of the Press. What is the matter? Can it be that Paris has become first-class and London has ceased to be first-class? Paris was not like this in 1913. She was decidedly down-at-heel. There was no particular verve or dignity in the ways of Parisians. They carried on in a second-rate way in a civilization which to the general European traveller seemed inferior both ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... is not correctness of grammar nor elegance of enunciation that charms us; it is spirit, VERVE, the sudden turn of humour, the keen, pungent taste of life. For this reason a touch of dialect, a flavour of brogue, is delightful. Any dialect is classic that has conveyed beautiful thoughts. Who that ever talked with the poet Tennyson, when he let ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... was always in such sedate gowns, never low-cut, her manners were so suppressed, her hair done so differently, and what a difference hair made! In fact, it was in her private life that she felt herself more truly the actress. On the boards her real secret self seemed to flash forth, full of verve, dash, roguery, devilry. Should she take to a wig, or to character songs in appropriate costumes? No, she would run the risk. It gave more spice to life. Every evening now was an adventure, nay three adventures, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... tale of early Bible times, told with a verve and vigour that keeps the interest sustained to the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... characters that "he is endowed with the same talent for imitating people which Chopin, the pianist, possesses in so high a degree; he represents a personage instantly and with astounding truth." Liszt remarks that Chopin displayed in pantomime an inexhaustible verve drolatique, and often amused himself with reproducing in comical improvisations the musical formulas and peculiar ways of certain virtuosos, whose faces and gestures he at the same time imitated in the most striking manner. These statements are corroborated by the accounts of innumerable ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... scheme are fully set forth. His principles are to be found almost entirely in Turgot. But they have a new significance for Condorcet. He has given them wings. He has emphasised, and made deductions. Turgot wrote in the calm spirit of an inquirer. Condorcet spoke with the verve of a prophet. He was prophesying under the shadow of death. It is amazing that the optimistic Sketch of a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind should have been composed when he was hiding from Robespierre in ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... and balance that the whole is as integral as a pearl. The scene on the Mount of Olives, which a great critic once pronounced worthy to compare with Correggio's work, is only to be surpassed by the Entombment. And in every scene—what freedom, action, verve! From the first to the last all passes with the swift step of Calamity, yet all ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... by a few explanatory words. He said he was going to play the "Ride of the Valkyries," and explained what Wagner meant to convey by that wild, stormy music. Then seating himself at the instrument, he proceeded to play the "Ride" from memory. His execution had a verve whose charm was irresistible. It was a lovely summer night. Through the open windows of the concert-room one caught glimpses of the moonlight quivering on the waters of the swift-flowing Rhine. Nothing could be heard save the river's melodious roar softened ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... which is represented by Isocrates, have come together in Demosthenes. Nor is this all. In each species he excels the specialists. He surpasses the school of Antiphon in perspicuity, the school of Lysias in verve, the school of Isocrates in variety, in felicity, in symmetry, in pathos, in power. Demosthenes has at command all the discursive brilliancy which fascinates a festal audience. He has that power of concise and lucid narration, of terse reasoning, of persuasive appeal, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... garret somewhere, and painted in the studio of a friend, not far from Barty's lodging. This friend, one Lirieux, was a very clever young man—a genius, according to Bonzig. He drew illustrations on wood with surprising quickness and facility and verve, and painted little oil-pictures of sporting life—a garde champetre in a wood with his dog, or with his dog on a dusty road, or crossing a stream, or getting over a stile, and so forth. The dog was never left out; and these things he would ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... by Willie, Oscar's elder brother, whom I had met in Fleet Street. Willie was then a tall, well-made fellow of thirty or thereabouts with an expressive taking face, lit up with a pair of deep blue laughing eyes. He had any amount of physical vivacity, and told a good story with immense verve, without for a moment getting above the commonplace: to him the Corinthian journalism of The Daily Telegraph was literature. Still he had the surface good nature and good humour of healthy youth and was generally liked. He took me to his mother's house one afternoon; but first ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the gold of braid and buttons. | |The nicest looking girls that ever assembled within | |the confines of any particular area of space turn | |out and smile and put lofty notes into the | |atmosphere with their giddy gowns and hats. There's | |snap and verve and pepperino in the very air. | | | |But for the first time in a long while the weather | |forbade all this sort of thing yesterday. From early| |morning a fog-blanket, wafted in from the Atlantic, | |hung over the town. Now and then it rained. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... prided himself on the classic verve of his prose and verse, and undoubtedly assisted in maintaining Punch's literary standard. His work for the paper went on increasing—from six columns in Vol. VII., to forty-two in Vol. XIII.—and soon won him his seat at the Table. For a long while, however, he did not shine ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann |
