"Vivacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some of the crowd formed a strong contrast to the jocund vivacity of the majority; and this again with the important swagger of the constables, who seemed fully to appreciate the consequence which the modicum of authority dealt out to persons of their standing in society cannot fail to impart. Then the anxiety to complete their task, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... contains to pay a visit here. I trust I may be excused for desiring an interval of complete freedom from such distractions as have been hitherto inevitable, and especially from guests whose desultory vivacity makes their presence ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... from gentle orchestra at the Gayety was playing with a vivacity which set the pulses leaping, while the densely packed audience, scarcely breathing from intensity of awakened interest, were focussing their eager eyes upon a slender, scarlet-robed figure, an enveloping cloud of gossamer floating mistily about ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... unconquerable lightheartedness which made you forgive her anything, and for which, poor soul, she had use enough before she was done with life. At seventeen, added to good looks, of which at fifty there was scarcely a trace in the thin and meanly worn face, this vivacity had proved a tragic snare. A certain young capitalist—known as a great gentleman—of that countryside had pounced down on the gay and careless young Matilda, and had at once provided her life with its formative tragedy and its deathless romance. Even at fifty, hopelessly buried ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... have had cause to feel as he did on that memorable night—memorable because I first sat at table with Julianna—with Julianna, whose magnificence was not boldness, whose spirit was not immodesty, and whose gentleness did not rob her of either her beauty or vivacity. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... readers of the Freethinker that they shall, so far as my powers avail, find no diminution in the vigor and vivacity of its attacks on the shams and superstitions of our age. Not only the writer's pen, but the artist's pencil, shall be busy in this good work; and the absurdities of faith shall, if possible, be slain with laughter. Priests ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... Queen of Scots, was to be married to the Dauphin Francis, son of the King of France. Their nuptials were to be celebrated with great magnificence. The King and Queen of Navarre returned to the court of France to attend the marriage. They took with them their son. His beauty and vivacity excited much admiration in the French metropolis. One day the young prince, then but six or seven years of age, came running into the room where his father and Henry II. of France were conversing, and, by his artlessness and ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... sober sense and modest reserve continues to be the taste of the English, who wisely prefer the pleasures of domestic life.—Domestic life should, however, be enlivened and embellished with all the wit and vivacity and politeness for which French women were once admired, without admitting any of their vices or follies. The more men of literature and polished manners desire to spend their time in their own families, the more they must wish that their wives and daughters may ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... we think it produces alternately each of these effects—is full of interest, worthy of study and fruitful of suggestions. Its superabundant energy seemed to create demands in order that it might expend itself in satisfying them. Its persistence was toughened by failure as much as by success. Its vivacity, verging upon boisterousness, was incapable of being chilled. Its strenuousness knew no lassitude, and needed no repose. In play as in work, in physical exercise as in mental labor, in all his projects, purposes and performances, Dickens seems to have been in a perpetual state of tension ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... profound grasp of human nature or a many-sided apprehension of life. They are either absolutely simple, like Lady Carlisle, or built upon a rivalry or conflict of simple elements, like Strafford and Charles; but there is so much restless vivacity in their discourse, the broad surface of mood is so incessantly agitated by the play and cross-play of thought and feeling, that they seem more complex ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Mrs. Edson, under the tuition of her strong-minded, sensible aunt, regained a share of her former vivacity, and declared she would be quite herself again were it not for that great black jail in the adjoining yard, which frowned on her every morning and loomed dismally in ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... smooth, clear, and without blemish; as, a fair face. The word applies wholly to what is superficial; we can say "fair, yet false." In a specific sense, fair has the sense of blond, as opposed to dark or brunette. One who possesses vivacity, wit, good nature, or other pleasing qualities may be attractive without beauty. Comely denotes an aspect that is smooth, genial, and wholesome, with a certain fulness of contour and pleasing symmetry, tho falling short ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... thing displeases me in your letter which else enchants me. You appear to doubt my obedience. Am I not your slave? And when you say to me , will I not ? Rely on me as on yourself; even more: for your vivacity may lead you into error, and I shall preserve my reason. Yes, madame, I will, when near you, preserve my reason when your interests are at stake. At the fixed hour I shall have the honor to lay at your feet my respectful homage and boundless ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... of Venice revived. The fleet, now superior in strength to the enemy, began to attack them with vivacity. After several months of obstinate resistance, the Genoese—whom their republic had ineffectually attempted to relieve by a fresh armament—blocked up in the town of Chioggia, and pressed by hunger, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Judy came often to the vicarage. But Miss Oldcastle was unable to see her any more than myself without the painful consequence which I have mentioned. So the dear child always came to me in the study, and through her endless vivacity infected me with some of her hope. For she had no fears whatever about her ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... extremely urgent in his proffers of hospitality, and at length, though he knew him but slightly, persuaded him to lodge in his house. He had been here but a few days when his host's wife began to enact the part of the wife of Potiphar, and this with so much vivacity, that on one occasion La Salle was forced to take an abrupt leave, in order to avoid an infringement of the laws of hospitality. As he opened the door, he found the husband on the watch, and saw that it was a plot to entrap him. [Footnote: This story is told at considerable length, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... putting her sister's wedding cards into their shining envelopes, and directing them in readiness for the post the next morning, while they were sealed by a youth of the same age as Claude, a small slim figure, with light complexion and hair, and dark gray eyes full of brightness and vivacity. ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it, yet women, knowing their own condition, should at such times positively refuse their company. And though such copulations do not always produce monstrous birth, yet the children, thus begotten, are generally heavy, dull, and sluggish, besides defective in their understandings, lacking the vivacity and loveliness with which children begotten in proper ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... the manuscript at Leipzig, I read some of the suppressed passages, and regretted their suppression; but Herr Brockhaus, the present head of the firm, assured me that they are not really very considerable in number. The damage, however, to the vivacity of the whole narrative, by the persistent alterations of M. Laforgue, is incalculable. I compared many passages, and found scarcely three consecutive sentences untouched. Herr Brockhaus (whose courtesy I cannot sufficiently ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... her a face from which the unnatural vivacity had fallen like a mask; the appealing face of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... labyrinthine complications, its killing responsibilities. Lady de Burgho is, after all, very far from dead, exhibiting in fact a marvellous vitality, and discoursing of the ins and outs of the various harassing Land Acts, and the astute diplomacy needful to save something from the wreck, with a light, airy vivacity, and a rich native humour irresistibly charming. The recital of her troubles, losses, and burdens, the dodgery and trickery of legal luminaries, and the total extinction of rent profits is delivered with an easy grace, and with ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Ruth had noticed a change in the girl's manner. She seemed to have lost the vivacity that had swept upon her with the coming of her new clothes; she had grown quiet and thoughtful, and had moods of intense abstraction. Ruth rode to the cabin one morning, to find her sitting on the edge of the porch, hugging Nig tightly and whispering to ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... from London by a friend I have not yet named, one who was well known in the railway world, Tony Visinet, the British Engineering and Commercial Agent of the Western Railway of France; a delightful companion always, full of the charm and vivacity that belong to his country. He took us to see his mother at Rouen, who lived in an old-fashioned house retired from the road, in a pleasant court-yard; a charming old lady, with whom G. G. was able to converse, but I was not. Tony Visinet's life was full ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... They followed Prince Dolgorukov out into the corridor and met—coming out of the door of the Emperor's room by which Dolgorukov had entered—a short man in civilian clothes with a clever face and sharply projecting jaw which, without spoiling his face, gave him a peculiar vivacity and shiftiness of expression. This short man nodded to Dolgorukov as to an intimate friend and stared at Prince Andrew with cool intensity, walking straight toward him and evidently expecting him to bow ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... seemed all that she had always seemed; to-day an incomprehensible and subtle change had befallen her—a change so mystifying to him that for a moment he almost doubted that she was Mamie Pike. It came to him with a breath-taking shock that her face lacked a certain vivacity of meaning; that its sweetness was perhaps too placid; that there would have been a deeper goodness in it had there been any hint of daring. Astonishing questions assailed him, startled him: could it be true that, after all, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... jerking the rein loose in Coleman's hand; and, perceiving that his rider (who was fully employed in grasping the pommel of his saddle in order to preserve his seat) made no effort to check his vivacity, he indulged his high spirits still further by setting off at a ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... was remarkable for its unalterable clearness. His forehead, wrinkled in straight lines and yellowed by time, was small and narrow, hard, and crowned with silver-gray hair cut so short that it looked like felt. His delicate mouth showed prudence, but not avarice. The vivacity of his eye showed the purity of his life. Integrity, a sense of duty, and true modesty made, as it were, a halo round his head, bringing his face into the relief of a sound ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... everybody else was miserable. He even began to pretend to be so. He put on a serious and anxious look like the others. He pretended he did n't care for play; he refrained from chasing chipmunks and snaring suckers; the songs of birds and the bright vivacity of the summer—time that used to make him turn hand-springs smote him as a discordant levity. He was not a hypocrite at all, and he was getting to be alarmed that he was not alarmed at himself. Every day and night he heard that the spirit of the Lord would probably soon quit striving with him, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... on both sides over her marble-smooth shoulders and ravishingly beautiful bosom. And then that face, that complexion like a faintly blushing rose, that look worthy of a goddess, those burning black eyes so full of vivacity and passion, and contrasting so strangely with the childlike lips suggestive of sleeping innocence, but harmonizing on the other hand with the dimples on her rosy chin and cheeks, set there surely for the undoing of any human soul who ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... been acquired by his family in consequence of the marriage of his father with the daughter of the first president of that tribunal. From his earliest years young Montesquieu evinced remarkable readiness and vivacity of mind; a circumstance which determined his father to breed him up to the "magistracy," as it was termed in France—a profession midway, as it were, between the career of arms peculiar to the noble, and the labours of the bar confined to persons of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... playhouse, the opera, with every occurrence in high life, he seemed perfectly master of; and talked of some reigning beauties of quality in a manner the most feeling in the world. Harley admired the happiness of his vivacity, and, opposite as it was to the reserve of his own nature, began to be much pleased ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... present," said Glyndon, with vivacity; "we are young, rich, good-looking; let us not think ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Faith. It is something in the hearts of men which by experience "feels the mighty insinuations of Divine Goodness"; complies with it; perpetually rises into co-operation with it, and attains its true "life and vivacity" by partaking of it.[39] Christ is thus the Node, or Centre, of ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... make nothing of this exclamation, and he was deterred from seeking light, by the sudden action of his host, who, bounding from his seat, with a vivacity of which one could not have believed him capable, charged to the French window and emitted ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... studs, and a big grey hat with a voluminous blue silk veil. Her small face was smaller than ever, but her eyes were as round and as bright as a mouse's or a bird's, and her talk was full of glitter and vivacity. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... was internal; no one felt on good behavior with a man who seemed always to be enjoying himself. Whether he was in a mood for floods of nonsense or applying himself vigorously to a task, his face seldom lost its expression of contained vivacity. Apart from a sound knowledge of his art and its history, his culture was large and loose, dominated by a love of poetry. At thirty-two he had not yet passed the ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... of every description had carefully avoided him, he looked even younger than his years. He was a tall, powerful, and strikingly handsome man, of very dark complexion, with black hair, beard, and moustache, and dark eyes that sparkled with good humour and vivacity; and his every movement and gesture were characterised by the stately dignity of the true old Spanish hidalgo. He had spoken but little during dinner, his English being far from perfect; moreover, although ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... of a free polity, with a new doctrine and newer discipline, introduced into Europe a fresh type of character and manners. People declared they could recognise in the men of Geneva neither French vivacity, nor Italian subtlety and clearness, nor Swiss gravity. They had a zeal for religion, a vigorous energy in government, a passion for freedom, a devotion to ingenious industries, which marked them with a stamp unlike that of any other community.[2] Towards the close of the seventeenth ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... could not join in her careless vivacity. Besides, throughout the visit, nothing was said that it was worth his ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... intent and volition—arrest the former, and obey the latter. This will place him on the safe side of practice. We always know where to look for the real Scientist, and always find him there. I agree [10] with Rev. Dr. Talmage, that "there are wit, humor, and enduring vivacity ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... the early biographies of many saints present us with instances of extraordinary graces and favours granted to them in infancy, quite as numerous and remarkable as those bestowed on Blessed Lucy, yet in her case we find them mixed with the details of a characteristic vivacity of temperament, which give them a lifelike reality, and show her to us, in the midst of her supernatural visitations, with all the impetuosity of an imaginative child. When she was only four years old, her mother's brother, Don Simon, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... hearing, on this occasion, the most eloquent of our English Bishops." On this exclamation, my kind informer regarded me with that lively and soothing air with which intelligent Benevolence corrects mistaken simplicity, and thus continued to instruct me with united vivacity and tenderness. ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... The vivacity and charm which signally distinguish Captain King's pen.... He occupies a position in American literature entirely his own.... His is the literature of honest sentiment, pure and tender.... His heroes and his charming heroines are the product ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... charming child, and had a certain vivacity in its countenance that is far from being common to all children so young; and he would often say to me that he believed there was something extraordinary in the child, and he did not doubt but he would come to ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... natural vivacity flashing up at the imputation. "What do you take me for, William Bernard, that you venture to use such a word? Am I one of those old maids whom some wicked wag has described as crying out in despair, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... gentle reader, a small but actively formed man, with a face of most unusual and portentous ugliness, an uncouth grin doing the part of a smile; a pair of eyes so small that they would have been invisible, but for the serpent-like vivacity and brightness with which they sparkled from their deep sockets, and a profusion of long hair, coal-black, but lank and uncurled as an Indian's, combed smoothly down with a degree of care entirely out of keeping with the other details, whether of dress or countenance, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... spoke, Rose entered the chapel with the same vivacity she had shown in leaving it, leading by the hand her father, whose sluggish though firm step, vacant countenance, and heavy demeanour, formed the strongest contrast to the rapidity of her motions, and the anxious animation ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... fortunes, and expectations, happy as a man can wish to be. Then the knowledge I had of you in Italy (although, give me leave to say, your conduct there was not wholly unexceptionable) convinces me that you are brave: and few gentlemen come up to you in wit and vivacity. Your education has given you great advantages; your manners are engaging, and you have travelled; and I know, if you'll excuse me, you make better observations than you are governed by. All these qualifications make it not ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... us all in the war of words, and by his colloquial powers at once delighted and kept us in order. Hobhouse and myself always had the worst of it with the other two; and even Matthews yielded to the dashing vivacity of Scrope Davies. But I am talking to you of men, or boys, as if ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the company he was now associated with, gave Horatio a manly way of thinking much sooner than otherwise perhaps he might have had, yet did not rob him of his vivacity: some of the queen's women, and the young ladies about the princess, particularly mademoiselle Charlotta, had a thousand sprightly entertainments among themselves, into which he, the baron de la Valiere, and some others who had attachments at that ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... it was ever our good fortune to meet with. A smooth, round, ruddy, comfortable face, over which the razor had almost unlimited sway; his mouth was always in shape for a smile; his eyes were of a light blue colour, and twinkled with life and vivacity; his hair was always brushed back behind his ears, terminating behind in a pretty little natural curl and whether it had the black gloss of his younger days, or the snowy white of old age, it was always neat and orderly. In early life he was very proud of his hair, and bestowed ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... weatherbeaten visage, deformed with a thousand wrinkles, once belonged to the dashing cavalier? And yet, it was even so. Pollnitz had grown old, and his back was bowed down under the yoke which the monster Time lays at last upon humanity; but his spirit remained unchanged. He had preserved his vivacity, his malice, his egotism. He had the same passion for gold—much gold; not, however, to hoard, but to lavish. His life was ever divided between base covetousness and thoughtless prodigality. When he had revelled and gormandized through the first days of every ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... to their children, in order that they might at an early age become inspired with a disgust for debauchery." Yet his comedies enjoyed the highest favor, and have been pronounced by native critics among the most remarkable and meritorious productions of the epoch. They are ever distinguished by vivacity, truth, and fidelity, in depicting the many-sided life of the people. He seems to have been a literary Ostade or Teniers, with less of ingenuousness and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Egle, who is distressed at the misery of her friend Amine, occasioned by the jealous humours of her lover Eridon. Complications there are none, and the sole interest of the play consists in the vivacity of the dialogues and in the arch mischief with which Egle eventually shames Eridon out of his foolish jealousy of his maiden, who is only too fondly devoted to him. What strikes us in the whole performance ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... souls. At twelve years of age the figure of Virginia was in some degree formed: a profusion of light hair shaded her face, to which her blue eyes and coral lips gave the most charming brilliancy. Her eyes sparkled with vivacity when she spoke; but when she was silent, her look had a cast upwards, which gave it an expression of extreme sensibility, or rather of tender melancholy. Already the figure of Paul displayed the graces of manly beauty. He ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... mathematics or the languages, artistic talent. In these ways and many others children resemble their parents. The same general law holds of likes and dislikes, of temperamental qualities such as quick temper, vivacity, lovableness, moodiness. In all traits, characteristics, features, powers both physical and mental and to some extent moral also, children's original nature, their stock in trade, is determined by their immediate ancestry. 'We inherit our parents' tempers, our parents' conscientiousness, ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... usurped by a Miss Stuart Belches, for whom Scott had felt perhaps the only deep passion of his life, and memory of whom was to come to the surface touchingly in his old age. Miss Charpentier, or Carpenter, as she was called, with her vivacity and quaint foreign speech "caught his heart on the rebound"; there can be no doubt that, in spite of a certain shallowness of character, she made him a good wife, and that his affection for her ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... women, denizens of le grand monde, who have adorned it with equally brilliant talents, equally captivating beauty, equally sparkling wit and vivacity of intelligence. And I have known many, denizens of the studious and the book world, gifted with larger powers of intellect, and more richly dowered with the results of thought and study But I do not think that I ever met with one who possessed in so large a degree the choice product resulting ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... moment believe that he had heard aright. He stared at her in bewilderment, at first pale, and then in a sudden heat and vivacity ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been looking through some notices which appeared in the press after Miss Macnaughtan's death. Some of them allude to her wit, her energy and vivacity, the humour which was "without a touch of cynicism"; others, to her inexhaustible spirit, her geniality, and the "powers of sarcasm, which she used with strong reserve." Others, again, see through to the faith and philosophy which lay behind her humour, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... of Water) that they seem'd to have bin nothing but coagulated Phlegm, which does likewise strangely abound in Vipers, though they are esteem'd very hot in Operation, and will in a Convenient Aire survive some dayes the loss of their Heads and Hearts, so vigorous is their Vivacity. Mans Bloud it self as Spirituous, and as Elaborate a Liquor as 'tis reputed, does so abound in Phlegm, that, the other Day, Distilling some of it on purpose to try the Experiment (as I had formerly done in Deers Bloud) out of about seven Ounces and a half of pure ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... the face is mild and lively; the forehead open, broad, and large; the eyes bright and full of vivacity; the horns glossy, slender and spreading; the head small, though larger than, and not quite so clear as, that of the Devons; the lower jaw fine; neck long and slender; chest deep; breast-bone large, prominent, and very muscular; the shoulder-blade light; shoulder full and soft; brisket and ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... inviting, and the circle around it as pleasant as six handsome young faces and one handsome old face could make it,—faces handsome with vivacity and good nature as well as artistic beauty. Mr. Leslie was there, and being a general favorite, the conversation was ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... that earthquakes, volcanoes, and all such little escapades will be over, they will, in lawyer's phrase, 'cease and determine,' as soon as our Earth reaches the age of maidenly bashfulness. Poor thing! It's quite natural, you know, in a healthy growing girl. A little overflow of vivacity, a pirouette more or less, what harm should that do to any of us? Nobody takes more delight than I in the fawn-like sportiveness of an innocent girl, at this period of life: even a shade of espieglerie does ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... after the disillusionment adolescence brought to these childish dreams. But in addition it was in a sense my island, my mountain, my land—for I had caused it to be. A sensation of tremendous vivacity and wellbeing seized upon me; I could not have lain upon the grass more than half a second before I leaped to my feet. With a nimbleness quite foreign to my natural habits I detached the encumbering chute ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the district that makes the wine, and our Bohemians accepted as the authentic growth of Ai the liquor that was served out to them in the appropriate glasses, and despite the scant degree of vivacity shown by the cork in popping from its prison, went into ecstacies over the excellence of the vintage on seeing the quality of the froth. Schaunard summoned up all his remaining self-possession to make a mistake as regards glasses, and help himself to that of Colline, who kept gravely ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... nearly as good. As for its predecessors, the "Itinerary" and the "Description" of Gerald of Wales, even setting aside the charm of antiquity, make a book that is equal to "Wild Wales" for originality, vivacity and truth. Of the antiquarian and picturesque travellers in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth none wrote anything that is valuable except for some facts and some evidence of taste. Borrow himself probably knew few or none of them, though he mentions ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... is not by Calverley, it is by——. But," said he, "the funniest thing I ever heard was this," and he repeated, with immense humour, and with wonderful vivacity, a set of lines which threw us all into fits of laughter. I regret I am unable to recall them. The conversation drifting to memories of some of his father's celebrated friends, His Excellency told me a delightful story of Carlyle. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... On the base are winged putti carrying a wreath; in the spandrils above the arch are two more. The upper frieze has also winged cherubs' heads, six of them with swags of fruit and foliage, all of exceptional charm and vivacity. The motive of wings recurs in the large triangular space at the top; flanking the magnificent Trinity, three grave and majestic heads, which though united are kept distinct, and though similar in type ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... Chichester, 10 guineas to Garrick, and merely setting apart L10 for his funeral, only vain fools, as he said, spending more. We can fancy the great actors of that day seated on Hardham's tobacco-chests discussing the drollery of Foote or the vivacity of Clive. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... so much so as formerly. I recollect some years ago being much amused by an anecdote, related by the late Dr. Moore, in his "View of the State of Society and Manners in France, Italy, and Germany." The Doctor was informed by a French gentleman of his acquaintance, with that vivacity which distinguishes his nation, that he had just then received a final dismissal from a lady, who had for some time appeared to favour his addresses, and that he was absolutely in despair. Dr. Moore, who, from the vivacity ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... father's castle, then, were the first thirteen years of the Lady Isabella spent, varied only by occasional visits to the court of Alexander, where her beauty and vivacity rendered her a universal favorite. Descended from one of the most ancient Scottish families, whose race it was their boast had never been adulterated by the blood of a foreigner, no Norman prejudice intermingled with ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... accomplishments which she had failed to learn in her country home. Lillie soon became more popular even than her sister; for, although she was not so well educated, she was naturally clever and witty, and there was a vivacity and freshness about her conversation, which, added to her beautiful face and perfect figure, made her ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... her eloquence, belonged to that class of persons who always speak as though some one were contradicting them, even though no one else may be saying a word. First she would raise her voice, then lower it and then take on a fresh access of vivacity as she looked at the persons present, but not participating in the conversation, with an air of endeavouring to draw them ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... Days relates to the works which a farmer has to do, and the lucky or unlucky days for doing them. It contains doctrines and precepts relative to agriculture, navigation, civil and family life. Hesiod was the first of a Boeotian school of poets. He lacks the poetic genius of Homer, and the vivacity and cheerfulness which pervade the Iliad and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the castle. An interesting Swiss woman, who has taught herself English for the benefit of her visitors, was our "cicerone." She seemed to have all the old Swiss vivacity of attachment for "liberte et patrie." She took us first into the dungeon, with the seven pillars, described by Byron. There was the pillar to which, for protecting the liberty of Geneva, Bonivard was chained. There the Duke of Savoy kept him ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... of her daughter, she made Annette wear toilettes suitable for a fully-grown young woman, a trifle too old for her; and Annette who showed more and more plainly her joyous and laughing disposition, wore them with sparkling vivacity that rendered her still more attractive. She lent herself with all her heart to the coquettish arts of her mother, acting with her, as if by instinct, graceful little domestic scenes; she knew when to embrace her at the ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... cause of this acquired serenity, Delsarte did not always refuse to satisfy his native impulses. I have already alluded to cases in which these returns to impetuous vivacity occurred, and how he rose above these relapses. Whether his peaceful spirit arose from religious feeling, or whether it was the result of moral strength, it breathed the spirit of the gospel; but it must also be confessed that our artist mingled with ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... imagined. Fortunately one corner was still weather-proof, the fir bark of the roof yet remaining intact. We had to be careful, however, about the roof, which consisted of stems of trees supported longitudinally. It was easy to see that a very little incautious vivacity on our part would bring the whole structure down on our heads. Water was found not far off, and we soon had a fire, which blazed up cheerfully. Its warmth was very necessary, for it was bitterly cold and damp. I had brought with me a hammock made of twine; this I slung in the driest corner, and after ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... daughter of that mother's rival seemed to her a wrong done to both the living and the dead. Naturally taciturn, unjoyful, and ever oppressed by that brooding consciousness of guilt hanging like a cloud over her memory, formless, vague, but never lifting, Fina's changeful temper and tumultuous vivacity were intensely wearisome to her. Nevertheless, she was forbearing if not loving, and the people said rightly when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... is "always young and always pretty," the other a rouged old woman. But it is unfair to push the contrast too far. Mrs. Piozzi at seventy or eighty was as sprightly, as good-natured, as Mrs. Thrale at thirty or forty. She never lost her vivacity, never her desire to please. But it is a sadly different thing to please Dr. Johnson, Burke, or Sir ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... peculiarities that can be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the name of the nation where they are found. I wonder what they are. Perhaps one of them is temperament. One speaks of French vivacity and German gravity and English stubbornness. There is no American temperament. The nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two —the composed Northern and the impetuous Southern; and both are found in other countries. Morals? Purity of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... delightful freshness, sincerity and vivacity about all of Grace Aguilar's stories which cannot fail to win the interest and admiration of every lover ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... him now as the glittering, feverish unreality of a nightmare filled with restless women and tired men who drank champagne, thus gradually achieving—by the time cigars were reached—an artificial vivacity. The caprice and superficiality of the one sex, the inability to dwell upon or even penetrate a serious subject, the blindness to what was going on around them; the materialism, the money standard of both, were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... no more troubled with visions of the Mediterranean than of the moon, and being compelled to keep more of their clothes in the pawnshop, and less on their persons, in winter than in summer, are not depressed by the cold: rather are they stung into vivacity, to which their meal has just now given an almost jolly turn. The man takes a pull at his mug, and then gets up and moves about the yard with his hands deep in his pockets, occasionally breaking ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... word, '[Greek: episkeptontas].'" I, also, have often heard him quote long passages from the Greek dramatists, particularly from "Aristophanes," really impromptu, and with as much facility and vivacity as if he had been reading English. I have already intimated that he read many of the new publications of the day. One of these was Mr. Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," with which he was much amused, saying that "some of them were very clever and spirited;" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... supperless on the grateful greensward, happy to rest and sleep. Mother Earth must have ministered to the weary flesh, for at sunrise, when the music of the bugles aroused them, they started up with the alert vivacity of old campaigners. Provisions, that should have been with the column the night before, arrived in the morning. While the reinvigorated ranks were at coffee, there was a great clatter in the rear, and presently a ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Billy his small mind had received such a rude shock by the sudden and terrible change in his circumstances, that he seemed to have lost all his wonted vivacity as well as his mischief. In fact, both qualities, or tendencies, had been thoroughly kicked out of him before he had been a week on board. He was protected to some extent by his father, who one day quietly ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... May it please your Majesty, answered the bard, with the most admirable fineness, 'Poets generally succeed best in fiction.' Mr. Waller continued in the full vigour of his genius to the end of his life; his natural vivacity bore up against his years, and made his company agreeable to the last; which appears ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... books as Essays in Criticism, Friendship's Garland, and Culture and Anarchy, an interest and a value quite independent of their literary merit. And they are displayed in their most serious and deliberate form, dissociated from all mere fun and vivacity, in his Discourses in America. This, he told the present writer, was the book by which, of all his prose-writings, he most desired to be remembered. It was a curious and ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... heard Sir Henry Taylor tell, and which, besides illustrating the subject, deserves for its own sake a place in print. The great and now venerable author of "Philip Van Artevelde" dined at Abbotsford only a year or two before the close of its owner's life. Sir Walter had then lost his old vivacity, though not his simple dignity; but for one moment during the course of the evening he rose into animation, and it happened thus: There was a talk among the party of an excursion which was to be made on the following day, and during the discussion of the plans Miss Scott mentioned that two elderly ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the swelling moor road with striving forelegs. Mrs. Durrant let the reins fall slackly, and leant backwards. Her vivacity had left her. Her hawk nose was thin as a bleached bone through which you almost see the light. Her hands, lying on the reins in her lap, were firm even in repose. The upper lip was cut so short that it raised itself almost in ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... was a man of restless activity, but he uniformly directed that activity to what seemed to him the public good, seeking neither emolument nor honour from men. Dr. Priestley was possessed of great ardour and vivacity of intellect.... His integrity was unimpeachable; and even malice itself could not fix a stain on his ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... been attracted by the other's knowledge. And then gradually something had been added to this. Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and simplicity of his rival, while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the brilliancy and vivacity which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman society. I say "had," because just at the moment the young Englishman was somewhat under a cloud. A love-affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the woodcock, which finds its food in slimy marshes, with head bent, and eyes fixed upon the ground, possesses none of the gaiety and vivacity of other birds, holds but a very low place in the scale of animal intelligence, and possesses a large share of that stupidity peculiar to the dull species that were formed to live in ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... have something very manly in his face; and yet he had all the sweetness and softness of an European in his countenance too, especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, not curled like wool; his forehead very high and large; and a great vivacity and sparkling sharpness in his eyes. The colour of his skin was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not an ugly, yellow, nauseous tawny, as the Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives of America are, but of a bright kind of a dun olive colour, that had ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... is made up of beautiful eyes and lashes, lustre of hair, poise of head, shapeliness of form, vivacity and coquetry; and there is a matchless grace in the way they wear the 'whatever,' be it the chiffons of the fashionable dame, or the shawl of the country colleen, who can draw the two corners of that faded article of apparel shyly over her lips and look out from under it ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... feeling—a continual running into extremes. Never were two sisters more fond of each other—it appeared as if the difference between their dispositions but added to their attachment. The serious character of the elder was roused to playfulness by the vivacity of the younger, and the extravagance of the younger was kept in due bounds by the prudence of the elder. As a child I liked Donna Emilia, but I was devotedly fond of ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... dress-uniform of the Ninth was everywhere, the black shakos and epaulettes, white pompons, cross-belts and gloves, and multiplicity of brass buttons, lending the immense assemblage a singular spirit and vivacity. ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... picture, is merely that of a young woman with all the impulsiveness of the Spanish character, spoiled as an only daughter, who had been reared in indulgence, and with the entire neglect which hinders the education of all the young ladies of her country. Time has calmed the vivacity of her youth; and madame, the Duchess of Friuli, has since given an example of most faithful devotion to duty, and great strength of mind in the severe trials that she has endured. In the loss of her husband, however grievous it might be, glory had at least some consolation to offer ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... man's paternal breast, as he saw the frank picture of a Prodigal Son rolled out before him; and had to gaze into the most revolting deeps of the passions and vices. Yet he felt himself irresistibly dragged along by the uncommon vivacity of action in this wild Drama; and at the same time powerfully attracted by the depth, the tenderness and fulness of true feeling manifested in it: so that, at last, out of those contradictory emotions of his, a clear admiration and pride for his Son's bold and rich spirit maintained the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... face, blue eyes, and light chestnut hair; it was not exactly an Anglo-Saxon countenance, in which, by the bye, there is generally a cast of loutishness and stupidity; it partook, to a certain extent, of the Celtic character, particularly in the fire and vivacity which illumined it; his face was the mirror of his mind; perhaps no disposition more amiable was ever found amongst the children of Adam, united, however, with no inconsiderable portion of high and dauntless spirit. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... cool tomorrow, when we steam into the great ocean," said Miss Mavis, expressing with more vivacity than she had yet thrown into any of her utterances my own thought of half an hour before. Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that it would probably be freezing cold, and her son murmured that he would go and try the drawing-room balcony and report ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... that lay in wait for the Alderney steamer in old Jack Guille's boat off the Eperquerie, next morning, was eminently lacking in the vivacity that usually distinguishes such parties when the sea is smooth and the sky is blue. In fact, when they got on board, the Captain decided in his own mind that they must all have quarrelled before starting. There was no sign of anything of the kind about them now, it is true, ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... isolated situations, from which it is left to the imagination of the hearers to infer the whole. The narrative part is almost always descriptive, and, as such, eminently plastic. If the picture represented has not the dramatic vivacity of the ballads of the Teutonic nations, it has the distinctness, the prominent forms, and often the perfection of the best executed bas-reliefs of the ancients. Like these, the Slavic poems seldom represent ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... bewildered in, uncertainty.—From an enthusiastic warmth of temper, indeed, we may for a while be encouraged to persist in some favourite doctrine, or to adhere to some adopted system; but when that enthusiasm, which is founded on the vivacity of the passions, gradually cools and dies away with them, the opinions it supported drop from us, and we are thrown upon the inhospitable shore of doubt.—A striking proof of the necessity of some moral rule of wisdom and virtue, and some system of happiness established by unerring ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... luxuriant, and of the finest texture and richest brown. Her other beauties must be left to the imagination; but it ought not to be omitted that she was barely eighteen, and had all the freshness, the innocence, and vivacity of that most charming period of woman's existence. No wonder she ravished every heart. No wonder, in an age when love-making was more general even than now, that she was beset by admirers. No wonder her father's apprentice became ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... M.D. (published by Edward Walker), is a lucid, popular narrative of the development of French Protestantism from the Reformation to the present time. The author is well-known among the living religious writers of France, as a man of learning, ability, and zeal. His style combines great vivacity of expression with a tone of earnest and profound reflection. The present work is evidently the fruit of conscientious research, and though making no pretensions to impartiality, is written without bitterness. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... of this circumstance[87], and from time to time obligingly satisfied my inquiries, by communicating to me the incidents of his early years; as I acquired a facility in recollecting, and was very assiduous in recording, his conversation, of which the extraordinary vigour and vivacity constituted one of the first features of his character; and as I have spared no pains in obtaining materials concerning him, from every quarter where I could discover that they were to be found, and have been favoured with the most liberal communications by his friends; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and martial shoulder-lines with which the Parisian tailor pacifies his conscience when he supplies English fashions. His stockings look ferocious. His dark eyes sparkle with inquisitiveness behind the pince-nez. He is vivacity incarnate, he is urbanity on a holiday. Mamma takes his arm and they trip past me. She is pretty, and would be plump if the art of the corsetiere had not abolished plumpness. Her hat conveys a greeting from the Rue Lafayette, her little ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... more, unreal. I recalled the sweet refined face turned up to me from the bare boards of this same floor, the accounts I had read of the vivacity of her spirits and the wild charm of her manner till the shadow of this old house fell upon her. I marveled, still feeling myself in the dark, still clinging to my faith in womankind, still asking to what depths her sister had followed her in the mazes of crime we were forced to recognize ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... and the book we were reviewing here but a moment ago is the most evident feature of the work before us. We have, we feel, said good-bye to the du Maurier who added so much lustre to the illustrative work of the period just preceding its publication. But in Punch the vivacity of his art is still sustained; and long afterwards in Trilby he scores successes again. In later years du Maurier allowed in his originals for reduction, and the original cannot be rightly judged until the reduction is made. In the book under notice no reduction appears to have been made, and ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... this opinion. In a well-educated French woman, there is an ease, an affability, a desire to please and be pleased, which not only render her manners peculiarly engaging, but also influence her gait, her gestures, her whole deportment in short, and captivate admiration. Her natural cheerfulness and vivacity spread over her features an animation seldom to be found in our English fair, whose general characteristics are reserve and coldness. Hence that striking expression which exhibits the grace of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... exclaimed the Senator, with all that vivacity of pantomimic gesture so characteristic of the South, "the reality far exceeds the imagination. She is an angel! Even in our country, famous for its beautiful women, Dona Rosarita is certainly loveliest ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... satisfaction the years that they had passed together in the country. He could not forget the German who was always hovering around him, affectionate and submissive as a younger brother. When his family commented with a somewhat envious vivacity upon the glories of their Berlin relatives, Desnoyers would say smilingly, "Leave them in peace; they are paying ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... little letter could never be doubted except by the most dryasdust of pedants. It is no proof of acuteness to detect the artifice of a forger in its earnest simplicity, its thoughtful tact, and affectionate anxiety. There is about it a vivacity and directness which at once and decisively stamp it as genuine. And external evidence shows that it was included in the earliest lists of St. Paul's Epistles. It was accepted by Marcion, included ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... the chimpanzee in bipedal work is for that species a great advantage, and the longer toes of the orang are a handicap. Although the orang's sanguine temperament is far more comforting to a trainer than the harum-scarum nervous vivacity of the chimpanzee, the value of the former is overbalanced, on the stage, by the superior acting of the chimp. For these reasons the trainers generally choose ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... public personality. The public has a right to know in what definite ways a reformer's righteousness is to be made effective; and Mr. Jerome has never taken any vigorous and novel line in relation to the problems of state and national politics. When he speaks on those subjects, he loses his vivacity, and betrays in his thinking a tendency to old-fashioned Democracy far beyond that of Mr. Bryan. He becomes in his opinions eminently respectable and tolerably dull, which is, as the late Mr. Alfred Hodder could have told ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... and long time ago!" answered Betty. All the vivacity which had marked her face in ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... sharp, metallic, matter- of-business clink in the accents of the answer, that produces the effect of one of those bells which small trades-people connect with their shop- doors, and which spring upon your ear with such vivacity, as you enter, that your first impulse is to retire at once from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... of the French nation; a trait in some individuals elevated to a sublime self-devotion, and in others degraded to mere excitability. The vivacity, gesticulation, and grimace, which characterize most of them, are the external signs of this nature; the calm heroism of the seventeenth century, and the insane devotion of the nineteenth, were alike its fruits. The voyageur possessed it, in common with all his countrymen. But in him it was not ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel |
