"Gymnastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... true belief that Christianity can sanctify all joys, and ensure the harmonious development of all our powers, have we not been forgetting that hand and foot may cause us to stumble, and that we had better live maimed than die with all our limbs? There is a true asceticism, a discipline—a 'gymnastic unto godliness,' as Paul calls it. And if our faith is to grow high and bear rich clusters on the topmost boughs that look up to the sky, we must keep the wild lower shoots close nipped. Without rigid self-control ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Craig Forth; the latter especially, are clever. A portion of the esplanade otherwise devoid of interest, is peopled with a meeting of the Highland Society celebrating the feats of the ancient Caledonians, the object of the Society being to preserve their language, costume, music, gymnastic sports, and martial games. This introduction happily fills up what would otherwise have been the only void in the scene, so thickly is it studed and storied with objects and recollections. Altogether, we have rarely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... the first we would recommend is general housework, provided windows are kept open, avoiding the more laborious parts, and always being careful not to get over-fatigued. Light gardening, walks, if not too long, and light gymnastic exercises are all beneficial. The exercises described in the appendix, practised for ten minutes at a time, once or twice a day, are quite suitable for the expectant mother, while deep breathing (see Breathing, Correct ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... astonish the considerate. Before he can tell what cadences he truly prefers, the student should have tried all that are possible; before he can choose and preserve a fitting key of words, he should long have practised the literary scales;[10] and it is only after years of such gymnastic that he can sit down at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Emerson the true reason for the athletic cult, given a generation before it existed among us. Your boy "hates the grammar and Gradus, and loves guns, fishing-rods, horses, and boats. Well, the boy is right, and you are not fit to direct his bringing-up, if your theory leaves out his gymnastic training.... Football, cricket, archery, swimming, skating, climbing, fencing, riding are lessons in the art of power, which it is his main business to learn.... Besides, the gun, fishing-rod, boat, and horse constitute, ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... themselves, how much worse it must be all through the less prominent muscles! To guide the body in trapeze work, every well-trained acrobat knows he must have a quiet mind, a clear head, and obedient muscles. I recall a woman who stands high in gymnastic work, whose agility on the triple bars is excellent, but the nervous strain shown in the drawn lines of her face before she begins, leaves one who studies her carefully always in doubt as to whether she will not get confused before ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... crystal serpent asleep on a carpet of green. Trunks of palm trees, dipping and swaying, join the two banks, and if, as bridges, they leave much to be desired for trembling old men and poor women who must cross with heavy baskets on their heads, on the other hand they make fine gymnastic apparatus ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... pyramidal shelter of the tent. Here were in progress all the occupations, and all the idleness, of the soldier in the tented field: some were cooking the company-rations in pots hung over fires in the open air; some played at ball, or developed their muscular power by gymnastic exercise; some read newspapers; some smoked cigars or pipes; and many were cleaning their arms and accoutrements,—the more carefully, perhaps, because their division was to be reviewed by the Commander-in-Chief that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... his sylvan fort, To do the honors of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land; Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand; Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... taken place in the military tactics, caused by the heavy armor and powerful horses which the crusaders brought into the field, and by the greater personal strength and skill in warlike exercises of the Western troops, who had no occupation from infancy but gymnastic exercises and athletic amusements. The nobility of the feudal nations expended more money on arms and armor than on other luxuries; and this becoming the general fashion, the Western troops were much better armed than the Byzantine soldiers. War ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... to ask which was the juster of the two, and which was the wiser of the two; but at this moment Menexenus was called away by some one who came and said that the gymnastic-master wanted him. I supposed that he had to offer sacrifice. So he went away, and I asked Lysis some more questions. I dare say, Lysis, I said, that your father and mother love you ...
— Lysis • Plato
... native "ragtime" band, playing tom-tomic strains—the lyric style of dinner-gong music that tears holes in the air. The leader was an imitator of Sousa and had his gymnastic eccentricities down to a fine point. He executed a fantasia on his horn of plenty that brought a shower of silver on the stage. We were told that the members of the orchestra were called the "Flowers of Music from Stamboul," and were working their ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... no wires. In this room should be a bed of hay. The natural food of mice is grain, but in captivity they are generally fed on bread and milk and slices of apple. They can be tamed to a small extent, but for the most part they do no more than run round a wheel, although if other gymnastic contrivances are offered them they will probably do something with them. Dormice (to whose food you may add nuts) sleep through the winter months, and are therefore not very interesting for more ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... a corner of the room or the courtyard, badly nourished, and at times scoffed at, or tormented for months by bandages and by useless orthopedic apparatus! Now, however, thanks to care and good food and gymnastic exercises, many are improving. Their schoolmistress makes them practise gymnastics. It was a pitiful sight to see them, at a certain command, extend all those bandaged legs under the benches, squeezed as they were between splints, knotty and deformed; legs which should have been covered ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... skillful feats of horsemanship and acrobatic displays by juvenile actors, rope-dancing, high vaulting and other daring gymnastic feats seen in any of our present-day circuses are interesting, but not new. The Romans had many clever tight-rope walkers, and I do not think they used the long pole loaded at the ends to enable them to maintain their equilibrium, as do some later performers. Japanese tumblers ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... away, in the less stately, more natural park surrounding the Alexander Palace, the property of the Crown Prince, lies the real paradise of the children of all classes. There is the playground, provided with gymnastic apparatus, laid out at the foot of a picturesque tower, one of the line of signal towers, now mostly demolished, which, before the introduction of the telegraph, flashed news from Warsaw to St. Petersburg in the then phenomenally short space of twenty-four hours. The children's favorite amusement ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... "And the same holds of love. For you may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is due to the great and subtle power of Love; but those who, having their affections set upon him, are yet diverted into the paths of money-making or gymnastic philosophy are not called lovers—the name of the genus is reserved for those whose devotion takes one form only—they alone are said to love, or to be lovers." "In that," I said, "I am of opinion that you are right." "Yes," ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... applicable always to his relationships with other people. The nostrils and mouth seemed capable almost of peevishness; and Marius noted in them, as in the hands, and in the spare body generally, what was new to his experience—something of asceticism, as we say, of a bodily gymnastic, by which, although it told pleasantly in the clear blue humours of the eye, the flesh had scarcely been an equal gainer with the spirit. It was hardly the expression of "the healthy mind in the healthy body," but rather of a sacrifice of the body ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... and a small boy; the first a lodger, the second a production of Mrs. Bardell's. The large man was always home precisely at ten o'clock at night, at which hour he regularly condensed himself into the limits of a dwarfish French bedstead in the back parlour; and the infantine sports and gymnastic exercises of Master Bardell were exclusively confined to the neighbouring pavements and gutters. Cleanliness and quiet reigned throughout the house; and in it Mr. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... itself and fixes the talons of the anterior limbs in the empty skin above it. Never did acrobat, hanging by the toes to the bar of a trapeze, raise himself with so stupendous a display of strength in the loins. This gymnastic feat accomplished, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Persis was smiling, too. His heart fluttered, and performed some extraordinary gymnastic feat, when she held ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... treatises abound which are exhaustive in their presentation of ethical theory. On the other hand books are plenty which give good moral advice with great elaborateness of detail. Each type of work has its place and function. The one is excellent mental gymnastic for the mature; the other admirable emotional pabulum for the childish mind. Neither, however, is adapted both to satisfy the intellect and quicken the conscience at that critical period when the youth has put away ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... those uncomfortable people," she declared, "who loathe what they call the obvious, and adore riddles. You would commit any sort of mental gymnastic rather than answer a plain question in a ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... devoted himself especially to natural science, political economy and philosophy, having for teachers such men as Fichte, Schlegel and Perthes; he diligently cultivated music and painting, and excelled in gymnastic exercises, especially in fencing. The idea of a marriage between him and his cousin Victoria had always been cherished by their uncle, King Leopold I. of Belgium, and in May 1836 the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and his two sons paid a visit to Kensington Palace, where ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... youths will take place to-morrow, the 24th. Tradition, no less than the distinguished character of the festival, requires that they should do their utmost in the gymnastic display. Two performances." Signed by Dioskourides, magistrate ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... food for the pig, when, having devoured it with a keen appetite, the major, in order to test his various talents, put him to a severe examination. It was found that he could perform with wonderful agility numerous gymnastic feats, such as jumping backward and forward, walking and vaulting upon his hinder legs, and keeping time to certain tunes. He could also distinguish between certain figures and letters of the alphabet, to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... shoes and sweaters and singlets in untidy brown parcels there stood the stout leather-jacketed vaulting horse waiting its turn to be carried up on the stage and set in the middle of the winning team at the end of the gymnastic display. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... entirely willing to learn the things that his keepers sought to teach him. To him, dining at a table was tiresomely dull, and the donning of fashionable clothing was a frivolous pastime, On the other hand, the interior of his cage, and his gymnastic appliances of ropes, trapeze and horizontal bars, all interested him greatly. Every square inch of surface, and every piece of material in his apartment, was carefully investigated, many ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... was a gymnastic performance peculiar to old Russia, and therefore needs to be described. It could become popular only among a people of strong physical qualities, and in a country where swift rivers freeze rapidly from sudden cold. Hence we are of ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... this personage sprang straight up into the air, cracked the heels of a pair of red cowhide boots together, and whooped: "Glory be! Send the PAOWER!" in a voice like the screech of a northeast gale. Mr. Ellery, whom this gymnastic feat had taken by surprise, jumped in ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... observation, judgment, perception, reason, memory, hope, imagination, and the love of the beautiful are appealed to, developed and strengthened by natural exercise, even as the organs and limbs of the body are developed and strengthened by gymnastic ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... other games. Miss Lincoln had arranged the afternoon exercise as systematically as the morning lessons, with the object of obtaining as much variety as possible. Twice weekly the girls played hockey under the direction of Miss Latimer, the gymnastic mistress; twice also they were taken for walks in the neighbourhood; and on the remaining Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, which were regarded as half-holidays, they were allowed to amuse themselves as they liked, ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... tempted to "show off" a little when it comes to gymnastic exercises. Neale seized the rope and began to mount it, stiff-legged and "hand over hand." It was a feat that a professional acrobat would have found easy, but that very few but professionals ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... the physical sciences, because there we could apply experiment. But experiment is impossible in the science of mind; and therefore philosophy will never be anything but a plaything or a useful variety of gymnastic. Stewart replied at some length in his Essays,[168] fully accepting the general conception, but arguing that the experimental method was applicable to the science of mind. Jeffrey observes that it was now admitted that the 'profoundest ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... complete in Gottingen his astronomical and mineralogical studies. Yet the wish to try his powers as a pedagogue never deserted him; and when, in 1812, the position of teacher in the Plamann Institute in Berlin was offered him, he accepted it. During his leisure hours he devoted himself to gymnastic exercises, and even late in life his eyes sparkled when he spoke of his friend, old Jahn, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... them to hold the ladder tight below; he hung from the ledge, got his eye well on the ladder below him, let himself quietly drop, and caught hold of it with hands of iron, and twisting round, came down the ladder on the inside hand over head without using his feet, a favourite gymnastic exercise of his learnt at the Modern Athens. He was warmly received by the crowd and by the firemen. "You should be one of us, sir," said a fine young fellow who had cheered him and advised him all through. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... John, jumping out of his chair, and performing some gymnastic feats that astonished the visitor and the family. "I may ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... cross-beams arranged at wide distances. My companion ascended to this awkward elevation, without hesitating; but I came to an "awful pause" before it. Fettered as I was by my Brobdingnag jacket and trousers, I felt a humiliating consciousness that any extraordinary gymnastic exertion was altogether out of ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... sea running, the ship rolled atrociously. Those who had made heroic resolutions on the subject were sitting in silent misery in their deck-chairs, which had been lashed to firm stanchions. Few were walking the clean bright deck, because walking that morning was a gymnastic feat. Three or four who evidently wished to show they had crossed before, and knew all about it, managed to make their way along the deck. Those recumbent in the steamer-chairs watched with lazy interest the pedestrians who now and then stood ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... mosque of wattle-work: we sit there under the shade, and play a rude form of draughts, called Shantarah, or at Shahh, a modification of the former. [14] More often, eschewing these effeminacies, we shoot at a mark, throw the javelin, leap, or engage in some gymnastic exercise. The favourite Somali weapons are the spear, dagger, and war-club; the bow and poisoned arrows are peculiar to the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... with a pathetically grave face. He never smiled; he never made a remark; he always gathered me tenderly up when I plunged off, and helped me on again without a word. When he had been teaching me twice a day for three weeks I introduced a new gymnastic—one that he had never seen before—and so at last a compliment was wrung from him, a thing which I had been risking my life for days to achieve. He gathered me up and said mournfully: "Mr. Clemens, you can ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... On leaving Oxford, he had roamed for a time as a wild man in a band of gypsies. He next took a cottage in the lake district in the North of England, where he associated with Wordsworth, and occupied himself alternately with desperate gymnastic exercises and composing slight descriptive poems. Even after connecting himself with the magazine and becoming the symposiarch of the "Noctes," and perhaps the greatest Tory in all broad Scotland, he did not renounce his home among ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... conjugate diameter than is the case in the Roman amphitheatres, and it is by no means so high. In the time of Napoleon, games were executed in this circus in imitation of the games of the ancients, for Napoleon had a great hankering to ape the Roman Caesars in everything. There were, for instance, gymnastic exercises, races on foot, horse races, chariot races like those of the Romans, combats of wild beasts, and as water can be introduced into the arena, there were sometimes exhibited naumachiae or naval fights. These exhibitions were extremely frequent at Milan during the vice-regency of Prince ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... solitude of the settlers upon the far northwestern prairies of a later epoch, many a mind snapped. Unnatural tension was succeeded by unnatural crimes. But for the stronger intellects New England Calvinism became a potent spiritual gymnastic, where, as in the Swedish system of bodily training, one lifts imaginary and ever-increasing weights with imaginary and ever-increasing effort, flexor and extensor muscles pulling against one another, driven by the will. Calvinism bred ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... successors of Constantine. The exercise of the body prepared them for the fatigues of war and the duties of active life. Those who occasionally mention the education or talents of Constantius, allow that he excelled in the gymnastic arts of leaping and running that he was a dexterous archer, a skilful horseman, and a master of all the different weapons used in the service either of the cavalry or of the infantry. [32] The same assiduous cultivation was bestowed, though not perhaps with equal success, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... addressed a communication to the Academie on 'Remedies against the Physical and Moral Degeneration of the Human Species,' intended more especially for the working-classes. He would have schools of gymnastics and swimming established along the great rivers, and on the sea-shore; gymnastic dispensaries, and clinical gymnastic in towns; and agricultural and other hospitals, combining simple and economical means of water-cure. His clinical gymnastic comprehends three divisions: hygienic or muscular exercise, not violent or long-continued, or productive of perspiration; medical, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... wings on which it was to soar. Auxiliary soaring societies were organised, among them a Turkish Ojagha with similar aims, and no fewer than sixteen branches of it were founded throughout the Empire. There were also a Turkish Guiji or gymnastic club, and an Izji or boy scouts' club. A union of merchants worked for the same object in districts where hitherto trade had been in the hands of Greeks and Armenians, and signs appeared on their shops that only Turkish labour was ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... very pink, and their paws so very cunning, that everybody liked to see them. Even the magnificent Mr. Checkynshaw had deigned to regard them with some attention, and had condescended to say that his daughter Elinora would be delighted to see them. Then the houses, and the gymnastic apparatus which Leo attached to them, rendered them tenfold more interesting. At a store in Court Street the enterprising young man had seen them sold for half a dollar a pair; indeed, he had paid this sum for the ancestral couple from which had descended, in the brief space of a year and ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... bird watching for a reptile to seize upon. Trunks of palm or other trees with their bark still on them unite the banks by a shaky and infirm foot-bridge which, if not a very secure crossing, is nevertheless a wonderful contrivance for gymnastic exercises in preserving one's balance, a thing not to be despised. The boys bathing in the river are amused by the difficulties of the old woman crossing with a basket on her head or by the antics of the old man who moves tremblingly and loses his ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... their numbers. This was especially true of the Cameronians, who were ever ready to give a reason for the faith that was in them. The Episcopalians lacked the Westminster Catechisms as a means of intellectual gymnastic. So far, therefore, they were handicapped, and indeed reduced to the mere persistent assertion that they, and they alone, were the apostolic Church, and if any out of their communion were saved, it must only be by the uncovenanted mercies ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... "below par." In health there is little or no margin for improvement. The results obtained are temporary stimulation, and a permanent invigoration which partakes more of artificial development than anything else. It is analogous to the development by gymnastic or other exercise of a previously healthy set of muscles. Where we meet with atonic conditions however, with debility, malnutrition, want of energy or general asthenia of an obscure nature, and ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... alphabetically arranged, for the clippings he daily made—almost all relating some bit of personal gossip about people in the public eye. Scattered about the floor were dumb-bells, Indian clubs, and other gymnastic apparatus which Field never touched and which the janitor had orders not to disturb in their disorder. Above Field's desk for some time hung a sheet of tin, which he used as a call bell or to drown the noise of the office ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... a gymnastic exercise. Acute powers of observation and memory might be developed by studying Chinese characters; acuteness in reasoning might be got by discussing the scholastic subtleties of the Middle Ages. The simple fact is that there ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... their boy chums were too active to remain quiet long, even after plum pudding. Allen was the first to become restless, and the others soon caught it from him. He rose, went through some gymnastic exercises, then looked about him curiously. "I wonder if there are any more places like this hereabout?" he said. "Does anybody want to take a little tramp and find out? You look about as energetic as a bunch of turtles. ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... of thawing snow, and over the worried body of a deceased companion. Their misery was so very human that I was sorry to recognize several intimate acquaintances conducting themselves in this forlornly gymnastic manner. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... corner much too quickly, performed a gymnastic squirm about an unexpected street-car and the speech ended in a gasp, as Alonzo, not of his own volition, half rose and pressed his cheek closely against hers. Instantaneous as it was, his heart leaped violently, but not with fear. Could all the things of his life that had ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... hands from the bell-rope which ran down the centre of the car, was that miserable little monkey, Matches, making a fool of herself and everybody else. Who but that little imp of mischief would have done such a thing as to get up in the middle of the night and go through a lot of gymnastic exercises on the bell-rope? It was her swinging and jerking on the rope that rang the bell and brought the engine to that ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... It was a weak delusion. When I stretched out my limbs it was only to find that the ordinary conveniences for making several people distinctly uncomfortable were distributed throughout my individual frame. At last, resting my arms on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic effort I became sufficiently composed to be aware of a more refined species of torture. The springs of the stage, rising and falling regularly, produced a rhythmical beat which began to absorb my attention painfully. Slowly this thumping merged into a senseless echo ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Hang. That remarkably fine specimen of his race, Herr S——, was met by wife, and brother, and a host of students—for he returned from Malm, victorious, with the Finnish flag. He, with twenty-three friends, had just been to Sweden for a gymnastic competition, in which Finland had won great honours, and no wonder, if the rest of the twenty-three were as well-made and well-built as this hardy ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... gymnastic in all these three cases is free action. The constant and interesting movement of others is the best of incitements to the abulic; motion directed into the channel of orderly exercise develops the inhibitory powers of the too impulsive child, and the child who is ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... act or think except within fixed lines. The type of Man is distinctly and clearly marked out, if not logically at least traditionally; each life, as well as each portion of each life must conform to this type; otherwise public security is compromised: any falling off in gymnastic education weakens the army; passing the images of the gods and neglecting the usual libation draws down celestial vengeance on the city. Consequently, to prevent all deviations, the State, absolute master, exercises unlimited jurisdiction; no freedom whatever is left to the individual, no ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... congratulated—I do not know who, and so I will shake hands all around—on the fact that the health of the country seems improving. Whether Dio Lewis, with his gymnastic clubs, has pounded to death American sickness, or whether the coming here of many English ladies with their magnificent pedestrian habits, or whether the medicines in the apothecary shops through much adulteration have lost their force, or whether the multiplication of bathtubs has ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... was all calculated to increase his popularity in the state, being devoted to offerings to the gods, gymnastic contests and public dramatic performances. But all the money he spent that way, and all that he possessed was but a small part of what Crassus bestowed upon a public feast at Rome for some tens of thousands of guests, whom he even maintained at his own cost for ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... These prizes took the form of collars, inscribed in large painted letters with the particular merit of the pupil rewarded, such as agility, courage, strength, &c. One pupil was given a prize for "hidden virtue." After the gymnastic lessons came riding lessons, for which we were taken to the Cirque Olympique, I and my two elder brothers being always put in the charge of a single tutor. But as he invariably found the riding ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... forget the sensations I experienced in making the passage of the huaro. I had felt giddy enough in going over the 'soga' bridges and 'barbacoas' common throughout Peru, but the passage of the huaro is really a gymnastic feat of no easy accomplishment. I was first tied, back downwards, with my back resting in the concavity of the bent wood; my legs were then crossed over the main rope—the bridge itself—with nothing to hold them there farther than ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... waltzing full of rhythmic grace. When the music was popular they accompanied it on their voices. After supper their heels grew lighter, and the laughter and gossip louder, but never beyond the bounds of decorum. A few Dutch dancers tried to introduce the more gymnastic methods in vogue in their own clubs, where the kangaroo is dancing master, but the sentiment of the floor was against them. Hannah danced little, a voluntary wallflower, for she looked radiant in tussore silk, and there was an air of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... epoch, and the general culture also of the Roman world conformed more and more to the forms established for that purpose by the Greeks. Even the bodily exercises advanced from ball-playing, running, and fencing to the more artistically-developed Greek gymnastic contests; though there were not yet any public institutions for gymnastics, in the principal country-houses the palaestra was already to be found by the side of the bath-rooms. The manner in which the cycle of general culture had changed in the Roman ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... matters where they cannot follow me, and since the novelty of my photographs has passed off I have some difficulty in giving them the entertainment they seem to expect from my company. To-day I showed them some simple gymnastic feats and conjurer's tricks, ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... stolen at either end. Perhaps three trips are necessary, and you know not how long before the new train starts. No one thinks of helping you. Darkness, possibly, adds to your difficulties, for you can't find your last carriage, or the train you came in has been shunted. You are lucky if, after gymnastic performances with luggage which is a new experience, and wishing, as no porters exist, barrows were supplied, for then you could carry all in one trip, the new train has not started, without you, but with a share of ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... soon able to amuse ourselves by shooting with a cross-bow, using for a mark the top of our snowy flag-staff, which, until now, we had been unable to see. Indeed, we took exercise in any way possible, and endeavored by throwing, running, and other gymnastic sports, to restore strength and suppleness to our half frozen limbs. The foxes, in capturing whom we had formerly been so busily engaged, now suddenly vanished, a sure sign of the re-appearance of the bears. These dangerous beasts soon visited ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... Once or twice I have wrestled with it, and for a time felt its chilling touch on my life; so I speak with knowledge when I say that evil is of no consequence, except as a sort of mental gymnastic. For the very reason that I have come in contact with it, I am more truly an optimist. I can say with conviction that the struggle which evil necessitates is one of the greatest blessings. It makes us strong, patient, helpful men and women. It lets us into the soul ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... also ten Commissioners of Games (Athlothetae), elected by lot, one from each tribe. These officers, after passing an examination, serve for four years; and they manage the Panathenaic procession, the contest in music and that in gymnastic, and the horse-race; they also provide the robe of Athena and, in conjunction with the Council, the vases, and they present the oil to the athletes. This oil is collected from the sacred olives. The Archon requisitions ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... very large play-ground, and in it, their kind teacher had had a number of gymnastic fixtures put up, for their healthy exercise and amusement. There was a very high pole, with four strong ropes fastened to the top of it, and an iron ring at the ends of the ropes. The boys would ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... or western, side was the gymnastic ground, enclosed in a wire fence, but free of access at all times—a place of paramount importance in all French ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... exercises already. In Egypt the girls as well as the boys are kept to such gymnastic exercises. My limbs were trained to flexibility by running, postures, and games with hoops ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the other end of the island, on the banks of the Harlem River, there stands the old warehouse which modern progress has converted into the Highfield Athletic and Gymnastic Club. The imagination, stimulated by the title, conjures up a sort of National Sporting Club, with pictures on the walls, padding on the chairs, and a sea of white shirt-fronts from roof to floor. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... all, where will be the difference between them and the military, or what would they get by submitting to their government? and upon what principles would they do it, unless they should establish the wise practice of the Cretans? for they, allowing everything else to their slaves, forbid them only gymnastic exercises and the use of arms. And if they are not, but these should be in the same situation with respect to their property which they are in other cities, what sort of a community will there be? in one city there must of necessity be two, and ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... recourse to the use of dumb-bells, and other gymnastic appliances. For my part, I find no artificial practices necessary for the maintenance of health and a vigorous circulation of the blood. My only gymnastics have been those of Nature—walking, riding, working in field and garden, bathing, ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... because the AEtolians were in possession of the passes round Delphi. They were most probably originally a religious ceremonial, and were perhaps only a musical contest, which consisted in singing a hymn in honor of the Pythian God, accompanied by the music of the cithara. In later times, gymnastic and equestrian games and exercises were introduced there. Previously to the 48th Olympiad, the Pythian games had been celebrated at the end of every eighth year; after that period they were held at the end of every fourth year. When they ceased to be solemnized ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... all his sonnets and treatises put together. In a long letter which has been preserved to us, he describes with much spirit and erudition this extraordinary ascent, before whose profound significance all the Alpine exploits of our time shrink into paltry gymnastic exercises. ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... appear truly ridiculous.... Not long since it was thought discreditable and ridiculous among the Greeks, as it is now among most barbarous nations, for men to be seen naked. And when the Cretans first, and after them the Lacedaemonians, began the practice of gymnastic exercises, the wits of the time had it in their power to make sport of those novelties.... As for the man who laughs at the idea of undressed women going through gymnastic exercises, as a means of revealing what is most perfect, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... time; he knocked some over and hit out at others in his flight, while his offended sense of power grew. He wanted to make enemies of them all. They began to gather up by the gymnastic apparatus, and suddenly he had the whole pack upon him. He tried to rise and shake them off, flinging them hither and thither, but all in vain; down through the heap came their remorseless knuckles and made him grin with ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... always statues! In the lesser towns, at Allevard or Marestel, he was dragged from the mairie to the Grande Place, between rows of firemen, in noisy processions, whose accompanying brass instruments split his ears, under pink-striped tents, draped with tricolor flags, before interminable files of gymnastic societies, glee clubs, corporate bodies, associations, Friends of Peace, or Friends of War societies! Then wandering harangues; commonplace remarks, spun out; addresses, sprinkled with Latin by professors of rhetoric; declarations of political faith by eloquent municipal councillors, all delighted ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Bob and Dick should run races across the common on their way towards the south parade, in which gymnastic display Miss Nellie and Rover both joined, for company sake as well as to set a good example; the big black retriever going over more ground than either of the competitors ere they reached 'The Moorings,' as Mrs Gilmour's ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... who resided on shore ascended by a ladder to the gun-deck, which had been turned into a schoolroom; how six cadets occupied the space intended for each gun-carriage, where hammocks hung from hooks served them instead of beds; how the chapel was in a closet opened only on Sundays. He described the gymnastic feats in the rigging, the practice in gunnery, and many other things which, had they been well described, would have been interesting; but Fred was only a poor narrator. The conclusion the young ladies seemed to reach unanimously after hearing his descriptions, ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... stone from which a tattered rug still hung, I came upon two nails driven a few feet apart into a fissure of the rock. I had driven those nails myself long before for a certain gymnastic attachment much in vogue at the time, and on looking closer, I discovered hanging from them the rope-ends by which I was wont to pull myself about. So far there was nothing to rouse any but innocent reminiscences. But when I heard the dog's ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... None of the dancing-women appeared, but five men dressed in shirt and trousers, danced together with spirit and grace. The music was provided by a drum, made out of an old tin box. Many of the steps reminded me of a Highland reel, but were curiously mixed up with calisthenic, and even gymnastic exercises; the hands in particular were used very gracefully, and they often took off their hats and waved them to and fro. But they also climbed on each other's shoulders, and did other strange things. After dancing for some ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... "As gymnastic helps he recommended the bending inward and outward of the wrist, the repeated touch from the wrist, the extending of the fingers, but all this with the earnest warning against over-fatigue. He made his pupils play the scales with a full tone, as connectedly as possible, very ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... height called Letna; it is, as it were, an eastward prolongation of the Castle Hill. Here is a large recreation ground for the use of such bodies as Sokol societies. In the arena, before a large and appreciative but critical public, the Socialist Sokols gave their display of gymnastic exercises on the occasion I have in mind. It was a stirring sight: ten to twenty thousand young men and maidens went through their graceful movements in perfect unison to the strains of their national music. It must be borne in mind that those exercises have ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... the pacified Mr. Tozer to the Pet; "you have used your skill very much to our advantage, and displayed pugilistic powers not unworthy of the athletes, and xystics of the noblest days of Rome. As a palaestrite you would have gained palms in the gymnastic exercises of the Circus Maximus. You might even have proved a formidable rival to Dares, who, as you, Mr. Blades, will remember, caused the death of Butes at Hector's tomb. You will remember, Mr. Blades, that Virgil makes mention of his 'humeros ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... praise is won, Leon Battista was from his childhood the first. Of his various gymnastic feats and exercises we read with astonishment how, with his feet together, he could spring over a man's head; how in the cathedral, he threw a coin in the air till it was heard to ring against the distant roof; how ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... entered. There was at least an hour to wait. He walked over to the Athletic Club, of which he was a remiss member, attending seldom during the recent months when his exercise had been more tragic than gymnastic work. In the library of the club house he sat down to study the volume which Helene had thrust into his ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Alpheus, during the celebration of that great spectacle, was liable to be thrown from a rock. The consequence was, that not one female was detected, except Callipatria, or, as others called her, Pherenice. This woman, disguised in the habit of a teacher of gymnastic exercises, introduced her son, Pisidorus, to contend for the victor's prize. Her son succeeded. Transported with joy at a sight so glorious, the mother overleaped the fence, which enclosed the magistrates, and, in the violence of that exertion, let fall ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... makes his characters always at work, some in appropriate occupations, some for the sake of exercise. Although the Phaeacians are externally given to softness, and the suitors are dissolute, he introduces them doing gymnastic feats. And moderate exercise he thinks is the cause of health. For a tired body sleep is a remedy. For he says "sleep came upon Odysseus" after he had been tired out by the sea ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... our training, one of the finest gymnasiums in the world, was near completion and would be ready to receive squads for instruction in a short time. Eventually we were ordered to prepare squads for gymnastic work, and those who had the privilege of attending it liked it very much. I was very fond of fencing, single stick and sword drill. This gymnasium was built and equipped, and the exercises, systematized and progressive, were the same as those at Oxford University. ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... she was a factor in this big school, and that she was doing her bit—however insignificant—to help up the athletic standard. In physical agility Winona was superior to Garnet. She could beat her easily at tennis, and there was already a wide gap between their gymnastic achievements. It was a fortunate circumstance, for it just balanced their friendship, and put them on a footing of equality which would have been otherwise absent. Garnet, so manifestly first in Form work, possessed of greater confidence and savoir faire in school ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... a ten thousand of that sort would never think of retreating. Their spectral advance on quaking London through Kentish hopgardens, Sussex corn-fields, or by the pleasant hills of Surrey, after a gymnastic leap over the riband of salt water, haunted many pillows. And now those horrid shouts of the legions of Caesar, crying to the inheritor of an invading name to lead them against us, as the origin of his title had led the army of Gaul of old gloriously, scared ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to Mr Snittle Timberry, that on their way out of the theatre and towards the tavern where the supper was to be holden, he testified the severity of his recent indisposition and its wasting effects upon the nervous system, by a series of gymnastic performances which were the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the idlers on the benches in the Court-house yard. Squire Buckalew (sidelong at the others but squarely at Eskew) had volunteered the information that Cory was a reformed priest. Stung by the mystery of Eskew's silence, the Squire's imagination had become magically gymnastic; and if anything under heaven could have lifted the veil, this was the thing. Mr. Arp's reply may ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... the pyramid is an easy task for any one in good physical condition and accustomed to gymnastic work. Two Bedouins assist you from the front while an ancient Sheik is supposed to help push you from the rear. In my case the Bedouins had a very easy job, while the Sheik enjoyed a sinecure. The stones are about a yard ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... did not occur, he coolly shifted his position, made a teasing grimace at her, and when she turned away slipped down and resumed his gymnastic exercises. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... does not deny to Socrates the credit of having gone beyond them in seeking to apply the paradoxes of Zeno to ideas; and this is the application which he himself makes of them in the latter part of the dialogue. He then proceeds to explain to him the sort of mental gymnastic which he should practise. He should consider not only what would follow from a given hypothesis, but what would follow from the denial of it, to that which is the subject of the hypothesis, and to all other things. There is no trace in the Memorabilia of Xenophon of any such method being ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... reason for his custom. His boys were strong, robust, handsome fellows; he had a charming pride in showing us the prizes they had taken at school; and on the lawn they were equally proud to show the gymnastic feats they had learned there. I believe we are coming to think now that the American schools are better than the Swiss; but till we have organized something like the Swiss school excursions, and have learned to mix more open air with our instruction, I doubt if the Swiss ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... conquerors reappear, armed, helmeted, and cuirassed, as they passed before the trembling nations thirty centuries ago. They are short of stature, but vigorous and sturdy, with an exceptional muscular development. They were, no doubt, prepared for their military duties from infancy by some system of gymnastic exercises, such as have been practised by other nations of soldiers. Their noses are high and hooked, their eyes large, their features as a whole strongly ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... probably go some way towards extending life under any circumstances, for it consists chiefly in deep and regular breathing, preferably of morning air, in swallowing the saliva three times in every two hours, in adopting certain positions for the body and limbs, which are also strengthened by gymnastic exercises, and finally, as borrowed from the Buddhists, in remaining motionless for some hours a day, the eyes shut, and the mind abstracted as much as possible from all surrounding influences. The upshot of these and other practices is the development of "the pure man," on which Chuang Tzu ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... doctor spreading courage and confidence. For years too few doctors have seen clearly that gymnastic tourism and sport do more for health than all doctors taken together. And now we face the fact that a single man, a non-medical man (Hitler) through his great qualities, has opened up new avenues of health for the eighty million ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... of gymnastic efforts, during which you have nearly begun your day out of bed on your head, you are successful. It is then requisite to pause and take breath. This cessation of energy affords an opportunity for the ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... the gymnastic endeavour. Standing on tiptoe, he clutched the rim of the chimney-pot, and strove to raise himself. The hold was firm enough, but his arms were far too puny to perform such work, even when death would be the penalty of failure. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... which he has presented more than five thousand books), a Working Men's Club and Newsroom, a Choral Society, supplied with an excellent library of music; a Recreation Club, provided with a bowling green; and a cricket ground, with quoits, and gymnastic apparatus, Mr. Akroyd has also allotted a large field to his workmen, dividing it into small gardens varying from a hundred to two hundred and forty square yards each. The small rent charged for each plot is distributed in prizes given at an annual flower-show held in his grounds, for the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... art of moving in coition, which is especially affected, even by modest women, throughout the East and they have many books teaching the genial art. In China there are professors, mostly old women, who instruct young girls in this branch of the gymnastic. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... bed is a simple hammock of aloes-fibre, slung in a corner; very low divans, and huge tapestry arm-chairs, for the rest of the furniture. Hung up on the wainscoting are pistols, guns, masks, foils, gloves, plastrons, dumb-bells and other gymnastic equipments. My favorite horse is installed in the opposite angle, in a box of bois des iles, a precaution that secures him from the brutalizing society of grooms, and keeps him a ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... disappointment was led by the eager German youth, who, inspired by liberal ideals, now thirsted for freedom of thought, of speech, and of action. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, a German patriot, organized everywhere Turnvereine, or gymnastic clubs, as a tangible form of expressing this demand. Among the students of the universities liberal patriotic clubs called Burschenschaften were organized, idealistic in their aims and impractical in their propaganda, ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... tobacco; and yet by the statistics of the last graduating class at Cambridge it appears that it is used by only thirty-one out of seventy-six. I am satisfied that the extent of the practice is often exaggerated. In a gymnastic club of young men, for instance, where I have had opportunity to take the statistics, it is found that less than one-quarter use it, though there has never been any agitation or discussion of the matter. These things ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... our cadets to act like young gentlemen and not like brutes, Garrison," returned the gymnastic instructor warmly. "However, if you wish to place Brown among the substitutes, I will not oppose you. His weight might help you to win some game if it was running very close and some of your best players dropped out." ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... Tekonsha, Mich. a $20 typewriter for a watch, a photo outfit, books, a magic lantern or gymnastic goods. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... life, and in the exercise of every faculty, bodily, mental, and moral. It is this which gives us pleasure in solitary exercises of physical strength, in climbing mountains, swimming, lifting heavy weights, performing difficult gymnastic feats. It is this, more than deliberate cruelty, that induces boys to torture animals, or to oppress and torment their weaker ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... Gymnastic exercises, dignified with this name, upon the occasion of a death or funeral, were common to many tribes. It is ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... gymnastic exercises, at which he was very expert, he contracted intimacies with several youths who were greatly his superiors in point of age, and who, pleased with his aspiring genius and address, introduced him into parties of gallantry which strongly captivated ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett |
