"Racy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must wake up to the fact that, as the very heart of our problem, we have a bolshevist nucleus in America composed of virile, red-blooded Americans, racy of our soil and history, whose conditions of life and labor are such as to develop in them the psychology of reckless, despairing, revengeful bolshevism. They really are little concerned with theories of the state and of social development, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of season! 'Tis not thirst but better reason Bids you tope on steadily!— Pass the wine-cup, let it be Filled and filled for bout on bout Never sleep! Racy jest and song flash out! ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... Coined in the early 1960s to replace earlier 'sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and later adopted by the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... opening the path to power of the old Chatham, whose vehement soul was all alive with the energies of youth, though lodged in the shattered frame of age. And he so familiarly known to the American people as old John Adams,—did he lose in mature life a single racy or splenetic characteristic of the young statesman of the Colonial period? Is there, indeed, any break in that unity of nature which connects the second President of the United States with the child John Adams, the boy John Adams, the tart, blunt, and bold, the sagacious and self-reliant, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... other way, mark you, did he reveal his interest in the Street and its doings. By not a single quaver was the cheeriness of his snatchy, racy, merry voice affected. By not the fraction of an inch nor a second was his gay little trot altered. But when the ends of his mustache stood out straight, his friends, no matter how slight was their acquaintance ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... cries of "Bright," "Bright," came from all parts of the House. The member for Birmingham is stout, bluff, and hearty, looking very much like a prosperous, well-dressed English yeoman. He is acknowledged to be the best declaimer in the House. Piquant, racy, and entertaining, he is always listened to with interest and pleasure; but somehow he labors under the prevalent suspicion of being insincere, and beyond a small circle of devoted admirers has no influence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... courage. There is certainly no lack of either about this idyll of Elizabeth Kemp of the lissome limbs and auburn hair. The story pursues its way, and one sees the soul of a woman shining clearly through the racy dialect and frolics of the Chingford beano, the rueful futility of faithful Thomas and the ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... Polonaise danced even as late as the beginning of the present century, declare that its style has changed so much, that it is now almost impossible to divine its primitive character. As very few national dances have succeeded in preserving their racy originality, we may imagine, when we take into consideration the changes which have occurred, to what a degree this has degenerated. The Polonaise is without rapid movements, without any true steps in the artistic sense ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... pathetic close to these pages, so full of touches of humour, keen observation and racy anecdote. It would seem as if the hand which wielded so descriptive and ready a pen had wearied of its task; as if, at last, the sunny nature was overcast and the merry heart saddened. But surely not another word ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... Jack' used to come and dine and sleep at my old home to keep his birthday, in company with my father and mother. At such times we as children used to come down to dessert to hear him tell stories in his racy way of Katerfelto, of long gallops over Exmoor after the stag, or of hard runs after the little 'red rover' with ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... calling; and not so much as a whisper of suspicion has been once aroused. I believe him myself to be inspired. You doubtless remember the celebrated case, six months ago, of the gentleman who was accidentally poisoned in a chemists shop? That was one of the least rich, one of the least racy, of his notions; but then, how simple! and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... real living boys, with their virtues and faults. The Cornish fishermen are drawn from life, they are racy of the soil, salt with the sea-water, and they stand out from the pages in their jerseys and sea-boots all sprinkled with silvery ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... tropical splendours and perils of far-off India. Then, after dinner, when Mr. Howard, Senior, went to his library to write letters, and Mrs. Howard dozed in an easy-chair by the fire, there was music, and sparkling chit-chat, racy as the bright Moselle at dinner, and games at cards, and fortune-telling by Mr. Howard, Junior; and it was twelve before ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... (a racy account of the Senate in the First Congress); Thomas Jefferson, Anas, in Works, ix. 87-185 (confessedly made up twenty-five years later); William Sullivan, Familiar Letters on Public Characters, 36-47 (written in reply to Jefferson); Joel Barlow, Vision of Columbus, ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... greatly relieved. "I want a book of twenty pages. Write anything you like, only bring the pickles in on each page. You know the style. Twenty blood-curdling ballads, or Aesop's fables, or something the public's bound to read. Something racy, mind, and all ending in the pickle. It's a good thing, so you needn't be afraid of overdoing it. You shall have a bob a page, money down, or twenty-five bob for the lot if you let me have it this time to- morrow. Remember, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... been here. The General was a gentleman, and yet had the flexible adaptability of a retainer; he had been trained in discipline, and hence knew how to defer without becoming fulsome or familiar; he was a man of the world and knew an unlimited number of racy stories, and even if he repeated some of them unduly, they were better than no stories at all. And then, there was his matchless, unfailing patience in playing chess or backgammon or draughts or bezique, whatever he perceived ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Australia—the danger of a Japanese invasion in the northern waters—the establishment of a naval base by Germany in New Guinea—the Yellow Labour Problem and so forth. He would intersperse his political dissertation with racy bits of description of life in the Bush, and would give the points of view of pearl fishers, miners, loafers, officials in out-of-the-way townships, Labour reformers, sheep and cattle owners—all of which vastly amused Lady Bridget, and ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... no account of these among the "Fruits and Fruit-Trees of America," though they are more memorable to my taste than the grafted kinds; more racy and wild American flavors do they possess, when October and November, when December and January, and perhaps February and March even, have assuaged them somewhat. An old farmer in my neighborhood, who always selects ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... last the trying on was over, and the Tony generosity was sufficiently enlarged upon, the ladies, as is the way with the best of the sex, fell into a mild gossip before separating. And while racy bits of Tenement shortcomings were being handed around, the small object of this gathering, too young, alas, to know the joys denied her because of her limited abilities to understand the nature of the conversation, ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... patron on the Esquiline. Is not the historic parallel between the two pairs of writers still further verified? Chaucer wisely chose the epic form for his greatest poem, because he could introduce thereinto so many distinct qualities of composition, and the woof of racy humour as well as of sprightly satire which he introduces with such consummate art into the texture of his verse is of as fine a character as any in our literature. In Langland's great allegory, the satire is earnest, grave and solemn, ...
— English Satires • Various
... stood at the door tossing their heads and eager to be off. They were cherry bays and so much alike that even Jim sometimes got them mixed. They were clean-limbed and racy looking, with flanks well drawn up, but with a broad bunch of powerful muscles which rolled from hip to back, making a sturdy back for the splendid full tails which almost touched the ground. In front they ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... Corwin, of the same State, with a portly figure, swarthy complexion, and wonderful facial expression, and an inexhaustible flow of wit, who was not a buffoon, but a gentleman whose humor was natural, racy, and chaste. Gulian C. Verplanck and Thomas J. Oakley, two members of the New York bar, who represented that city, were statesmen rather than politicians. John Chambers, of Kentucky, a gigantic economist, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... opera. He had two daughters, recently married, before whom he repeated the most piquant witticisms of Voltaire, and the most improper stories of Tallemant de Reaux; and consequently both promised to afford the scandalmongers a series of racy anecdotes, as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... interesting for their racy descriptions of European life in India..... Those that follow are of more serious import, seeking to tell the truth about the Hindoo character and English influences, good and bad, upon it, as well as to suggest some better course of treatment than ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... mist, saw the remains of four ships that had run aground upon it, and were nearly run into ourselves by a clumsy merchantman, whom we had the relief of being able to abuse in our native vernacular, and the most racy sea-slang. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... there was a word of opprobrium, mundane or nautical, which the port skipper didn't shout at that submarine commander, the port engineer supplied it. In all his life Cappy Ricks had never listened to such rich, racy, unctuous abuse; it lifted itself about the level of the commonplace and became a work of ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... atmosphere her womanly nature, chilled and dwarfed though it was, would often manifest itself in ways sweet and unexpected. Under no other circumstances could she have appeared so well. She as often spoke to herself in racy comment on what was before her as to Dennis, and ever and anon would make some pleasant remark to him, as she might throw a dainty morsel to her greyhound Wolf, looking wistfully at her while she dined. At the same time it must be confessed that she had ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the famous Dr. South, published treatises against Dr. Sherlock, which, while avoiding the Scylla of Tritheism, ran dangerously near to the Charybdis of Sabellianism. Like all his writings, South's treatise was racy, but violently abusive, and such irritation and acrimony were engendered, that the Royal authority was at last exercised in restraining each party from introducing novel opinions, and requiring them to adhere to such explications only ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... them were, but still the strange language was an obstacle. They are worse printed than ours, and are by no means equal to such journals as the Times and Tribune. They publish continued stories, or novels, and racy criticisms of music, art, and literature. The political department of the French newspaper at the present day is the weakest part of the sheet. It is lifeless. A few meager facts are recorded, and there is a little tame comment, and that is all. There was a time when the ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... the works of an author—you are pleased with them, and you wish to become acquainted with the man. You anticipate great pleasure—you expect from his lips, in impromptu, the same racy remarks, the same chain of reasoning, the same life and vigour which have cost him so many hours of labour and reflection, or which have been elicited in his happiest moods, and this from a person who comes, perhaps, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... joke, and the constant readiness for an argument upon any subject under the sun, which had endeared him to his comrades in Glasgow. Every Cheshunt man of that day readily recalls, and rejoices as he does so, the memory of his good-natured practical joking, of his racy and pointed speeches upon all momentous 'house questions,' of his power as a reciter, and of his glowing personal piety. To know him even slightly was to respect him; and to enter at all into sympathy with him was to love him as long ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... opposite side of the room and showing himself at last so much more completely as diverted that it fairly attracted their hostess's notice. Mrs. Lowder, however, only smiled on Milly for a sign that something racy was what she had expected, and resumed, with a splash of her screw, her cruise among the islands. "Oh, I've heard that," ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... sizes, most of which would, on being touched, have given, by their ringing sound, assurance of their emptiness. In bins, at one extremity of the cellar, were a number of bottles, whose thick mantle of dust and cobwebs spoke volumes for the ripe and racy nature of their contents. A large chest of cedar-wood stood in the innermost nook of the cellar, with raised lid, disclosing a quantity of cigars, worm-eaten and musty from extreme age. In the massive wall, forming one end of the vault, and which was in fact ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... DEPARTMENT will embrace, in addition to vigorous and fearless comments on the events of the times, genial gossip with the reader on all current topics, and also devote abundant space to those racy specimens of American wit and humor, without which there can be no perfect exposition of our national character. Among those who will contribute regularly to this department may be mentioned the name of CHARLES F. BROWNE ("Artemus Ward"), from whom we have ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... whom I will mention is Carlyle, seen by me several times at my brother's house, and two or three times at my own house. His talk was very racy and interesting, just like his writings, but he sometimes went on too long on the same subject. I remember a funny dinner at my brother's, where, amongst a few others, were Babbage and Lyell, both of whom liked to talk. Carlyle, however, silenced every one by haranguing during the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... we do, Doting on you, doubting for you, Looking for you, longing for you, Waiting for you, watching for you, Fearing you have cut and run, Ere your heavy task was done In cigars, and snuff, and rum; Spoiling for us lots of fun, And racy items for The Sun, In the seizure rows begun, And the heavy raids to come. Think of poor, forsaken KIRBY, Think of honest-scented HARVEY! Your desertion, J. F. BAILEY, "Busts" our glorious Trinity; Robs the law of subtlety, Knocks our look for moietie, Knocks that Jersey property! ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... That are, indeed, but magick charms To raise the Devil, and mean one thing, And that is down-right conjuring; And in itself more warrantable, 595 Than cheat, or canting to a rabble, Or putting tricks upon the Moon, Which by confed'racy are done. Your ancient conjurers were wont To make her from her sphere dismount. 600 And to their incantations stoop: They scorn'd to pore thro' telescope, Or idly play at bo-peep with her, To find out cloudy or fair weather, Which ev'ry almanack can tell, 605 Perhaps, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... done to secure intestinal cleanliness in infancy, childhood and maturity. Mothers and nurses cannot give this subject too much thought and care, since the welfare of future generations depends largely upon intestinal cleanliness, in view of the rich and racy life of our hothouse civilization. We are a people poisoned through constipation and diarrhea: two affections that derange more lives than all other pathological conditions together. Banish alimentary uncleanliness and you take most of the poisons from the human race—poisons ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... her—out came story after story, in the racy Mercian vernacular, illustrating a good ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of that delightful ease we are wont to admire in the writings of Smollett, Fielding, and the character novelists of the latter half of the past century. The style of Captain Marryatt is fresh, vigorous, and racy—"native and to the manner born,"—abounding in lively anecdote, but never straying into caricature—with just enough of the romance of life to keep the incidents afloat from commonplace, and probability above-board. This and the following ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... that is to say—which unites the strength of Burgundy with the bouquet of Chateau Margaux. Mr Reach despises a weak thin wine, and, by an idiosyncratical necessity, he has produced a sparkling, racy book. He traces the falling-off in our literature to a change in wine. 'The Elizabethans quaffed sack, or "Gascoyne, or Rochel wyn,"' quoth he; 'and we had the giants of those days. The Charles II. comedy writers worked on claret. Port came into fashion—port sapped our brains—and, instead ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... I found some exquisite bits of description in it, but I heartily wished them in verse, they were motives for poems; and there was some wit. I remember a passage very racy indeed, of middle-class England. Antony, I think is the man's name, describes how he is interrupted at his tea; a paragraph of seven or ten lines with "I am having my tea, I am at my tea," running through it for refrain. Then a description of a lodging-house dinner: "a block ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... been distributed. There was very little—two newspapers, a couple of letters for Nesbit Thorne, and one for Norma from a New York friend, claiming a promised visit, and overflowing with gossip and news of Gotham, full of personalities also, and a faint lady-like suspicion of wickedness—a racy, entertaining letter. The writer, a Mrs. Vincent, was Norma's most intimate friend, and she often sacrificed an hour of her valuable time to the amusement of the girl, whom she felt convinced was bored to death down in that country ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... confess I weakly liked the better for the occasional gallicisms remaining from an inveterate habit of French. Those who know the writings of Mr. Henry James will recognize the inherited felicity of diction which is so striking in the writings of Mr. Henry James, Jr. The son's diction is not so racy as the father's; it lacks its daring, but it is as fortunate and graphic; and I cannot give it greater praise than this, though it has, when he will, a splendor and state which is ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... no fault to find with the broad, racy, slap-dash language of the American frontier, with its picturesque perversions and its droll exaggeration. The inspired person who chose to call a coffin an "eternity box" and whisky "blue ruin" was too innocent to sneer. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Here on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street there were Salvation Army bands and spectrum-shawled old ladies on door-steps and sugary, sticky candy in the grimy hands of shiny-haired children—and the late sun striking down on the sides of the tall tenements. All very rich and racy and savory, like a dish by a provident French chef that one could not help enjoying, even though one knew that the ingredients were ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... steadily to his daily task. His life in town was sternly ascetic, but he allowed himself long walks in the country, and he continued to meditate a somewhat thankless Muse. In 1832 he visited his brothers on the Illinois prairies, and stopped one day to chat with a "tall awkward uncouth lad" of racy conversational powers, who was leading his company of volunteers into the Black Hawk War. The two men were destined to meet again in 1860, when Bryant presided at that Cooper Union address of Lincoln's which revealed to New York and to the country that the former captain ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... he seldom or never cried, but he sometimes laughed, and that not unfrequently; and when he did so you could not choose but hear, for his whole soul gushed out in his laugh, which was rich, racy, and riotous. He usually lay down and rolled when he laughed, being quite incapable of standing to do it—at least during the early period of babyhood. But Will would not laugh at everything. You could not make him ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... which intervened before Merriton's arrival, Cleek did a little "altering" in face and general get-up, and when he did appear certainly no one would have recognized the aristocratic looking individual of a moment or two before, in an ordinary-appearing, stoop-shouldered, rather racy-looking tout. ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... I have reason to believe I have in some measure succeeded. Before the appearance of my work the popular traditions of our city were unrecorded; the peculiar and racy customs and usages derived from our Dutch Progenitors were unnoticed, or regarded with indifference, or adverted to with a sneer. Now they form a convivial currency, and are brought forward on all occasions: they link our ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... himself. On the contrary, we love to see a wag taste his own joke to his party; to watch a quirk, or a merry conceit, flickering upon the lips some seconds before the tongue is delivered of it. If it be good, fresh, and racy—begotten of the occasion; if he that utters it never thought it before, he is naturally the first to be tickled with it; and any suppression of such complacence we hold to be churlish and insulting. What does it seem to imply, but that your company is weak or foolish enough to be moved by ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... him out a cup of tea; gloomily he watched him drink it. Heedless of his gloom, Mr. James plunged into an account of his stay in Scotland, telling of the country, the food, and the people with an agreeable, racy vivacity. Slowly the great cloud lifted from Hilary Vance's ample face. He grew interested; he asked questions; at ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... rank and dignity of an English classic. Plot, style, and truthfulness are of the soundest British character. Racy, idiomatic, mirror-like, always interesting, suggesting thought on the knottiest social and religious questions, now deeply moving by its unconscious pathos, and anon inspiring uproarious laughter, it is a work the world will not willingly ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... desperate fellow got in—had an audience, grinned, backed down and went his way, tickled as a dog with two tails. Others were victimized by notes from Barnum (!) or Miss Lind's "private secretary," offering an interview, and many of these transactions were "rich and racy" enough, in all conscience, for the pages of a modern Joe Miller. But Aunt Nabby Folsom's time was about as rich as the raciest, and will ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... betrays the inadequate effort to describe thoughts or emotions that are but vaguely perceived, which is the characteristic of the best sensational writing. Indeed, there is little poetry by the eminent contemporary masters which is so ripe and racy as his. He does not make rhetoric stand for passion, nor vagueness for profundity; nor, on the other hand, is he such a voluntary and malicious "Bohemian" as to conceive that either in life or letters a man is released from the plain rules of morality. Indeed, he used to be accused of preaching in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... example, "All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God," sounds like Emerson, whose workmanship, for the rest, in his prose essays was exceedingly fine and close. He was not afraid to be homely and racy in expressing thought of the highest spirituality. "Hitch your wagon to a star" is a good instance of ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... Tudesco walked into the shop with a staggering gait; his eyes glittered and his mouth hung half open in anticipation of racy talk and self-indulgence, while his great nose, his pink cheeks, his fat, loose hands and his big belly, gallantly carried, gave him, beneath his jacket and felt hat, a perfect likeness to a little rustic god his ancestors worshipped, the ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... had a bugbear; Slang. Could not endure the smart technicalities current; their multitude did not overpower her distaste; she called them "jargon"—"slang" was too coarse a word for her to apply to slang: she excluded many a good "racy idiom" along with the real offenders; and monosyllables in general ran some risk of' having to show their passports. If this was pedantry, it went no further; she was open, free, and youthful with her young pupils; and had the art to put herself on their level: often, when ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... mother country. We use it like Scotsmen, not as if it belonged to us, but as if we wished to prove that we belonged to it, by showing our intimacy with its written rather than with its spoken dialect. And yet all the while our popular idiom is racy with life and vigor and originality, bucksome (as Milton used the word) to our new occasions, and proves itself no mere graft by sending up new suckers from the old root in spite of us. It is only from its roots in the living generations of men that a language can be reinforced ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... attraction was the personification of Bailie Jarvie by Charles Mackay, who, being himself a native of Glasgow, entered into the minutest peculiarities of the character with high gusto, and gave the west country dialect in its most racy perfection." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... her petticoats, and yelled when he dropped melted sealing-wax on her bare arms; it is a tragi-comic picture, and one is glad that Sabrina married some other man than her exacting guardian. But we would not miss Miss Seward's racy stories for anything, nor ignore her many letters with their revelation of the glories of old- time Lichfield, and of those 'lunar meetings' at which the wise ones foregathered. Now and again these worthies burst into sarcasm ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... the reform administration. Why? Because these administrations, with their daily rows, furnish as racy news as prizefights or divorce cases. Tammany don't care to get in the papers. It goes right along attendin' to business quietly and only wants to be let alone. That's one reason why the papers ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... such abundance of thoughts: he is never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care for all that he cares for. Cut these words and they bleed; they are vascular and alive." Such a voice, speaking at Shakspere's ear in an English nearly as racy and nervous as the incomparable old-new French of the original, was in itself ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... present to young folks who are ardent collectors and readers of cheery, harmless fiction. It is excellently 'got up,' the illustrations are very good, and the story itself is quite exciting. All people who love (or loathe) stamp collecting are honestly advised to read the racy story ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... Steele, or both of them, in the following paper of the Tatler (No. 221, Sept. 7, 1710), has given one of those quietly satiric pictures of many a well-known man of the day, some Petiver or Hans Sloane. The widow Gimcrack's letter is peculiarly racy. Although old books, the Tatler and Spectator still furnish rare material to many a popular magazine writer of the day, who sometimes does little more than dilute a paper in these and other rare repertories of the style and wit of a ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... is stupid," thought the chevalier. "I have nothing to contend with in such a rival; if the others are no more dangerous, it will be very easy for me to make Blue Beard adore me; but I must find the road to Devil's Cliff. It will be truly racy to be conducted thither by this bear." He spoke: "But, my brave hunter, alas! all glory is bought; I wished to see you, I ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... questions. But if any of the old disputes came up again, I would certainly speak out my mind next hot-pot day. But you are hardly acquainted with our Darkshire fellows, for all you're a Darkshire man yourself They have such a sense of humour, and such a racy mode of expression! I am getting really to know some of them now, and they talk pretty freely ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Dr. Prettyman, (afterwards Tomline,) Bishop of Winchester, and, in earlier times, private tutor to Mr. Pitt; they were published by Middleton, first Bishop of Calcutta, in the preface to his work on the Greek article; and for racy idiomatic Greek, self-originated, and not a mere mocking- bird's iteration of alien notes, are so much superior to all the attempts of these sexagenarian doctors, as distinctly to mark the growth of a new era and a new generation in this difficult ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... to have known it by the look of me. They discussed my points of resemblance to "the Move white man," and I am ashamed to say I could not forbear from smiling, as I distinctly recognised my friends from the very racy description of their personal appearance and tricks of manner given by a lively Esoonian belle who had certainly met them. So content and happy did I become under these soothing influences, that I actually took off my boots, a thing I had quite got out of the habit of doing, and had them ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... racy, mischievous role imaginable," said Herode warmly, "and she plays it to perfection—it is her chef d'oeuvre. She is always applauded ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... That racy and turf-attending judge, Lord Brampton, better known as Sir Henry Hawkins, tells many good stories of himself in his Reminiscences, but it is the unconscious humorist of Marylebone Police Court who records this bon mot of ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... reminds one at times of the senator Antonio in Otway's Venice Preserved, and is, of course, deceived by the gallant Stanley; the sayings and doings of Mrs. Moneylove, who is "what she ought not to be," and the way she tricks her husband, are very racy, perhaps too much so for the taste of the present times. I do not think any dramatist would now bring upon the stage a young lady like Theodocia, daughter of old Moneylove, reading the list about Squire Careless. ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... cogent, influential, urgent, convincing, conclusive; ardent, eager, zealous, strenuous, stanch, unwavering, determined; spirituous, intoxicating, alcoholic; vivid, dazzling, intense, glaring; effective, drastic, potent; racy, pungent, piquant; tough, tenacious; rank, strong-smelling; valid. Antonyms: weak, vulnerable, frail, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... in the cars are well worth a traveller's attention. They are very frequently on politics, but often one hears stories such as the world has become familiarised with from the early pages of Barnum's Autobiography, abounding in racy anecdote, broad humour, and cunning imposition. At Erie we changed cars, and I saw numerous emigrants sitting on large blue boxes, looking disconsolately about them; the Irish physiognomy being the most predominant. They are generally so dirty that they travel by themselves ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Aladdin, talking eagerly and with the naivete of a child, wondered why he had never liked this man so much before. And Larch told the somewhat abject story of his life three times with an introduction of much racy anecdote. ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... his deliberately chosen task to bring to the new country some savour of things gentle and mellow caught from the literature of Europe. But, in the first place, no writer could in the detail of his work have been more racy of that New England countryside which lay round his home; and, in the second place, no writer could have spoken more unerringly to the ear of the whole wide America of which his home was a little part. It seems strange ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... supernatural appearances are never explained away, and the ghostly agencies are introduced in the spirit of serious, if somewhat melodramatic, romance. Marryat's personal experience enabled him, with little research, to produce a life-like picture of old Dutch seamanship, and his powers in racy narrative have transformed the Vanderdecken legend into a stirring tale of terror. The plot cannot be called original, but it is more carefully worked out and, from the nature of the material at hand, more ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... been so effective for the purpose which they were intended to serve, if their writers had been more fanciful and imaginative, or less intent upon what they had to say than upon the manner of saying it. But if not extremely poetical, they are extremely national, and racy of the soil; and some of them are certain to live as long as the language which produced them. For the convenience of reference and consultation they have been arranged chronologically; beginning with the discontents ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... to the public gaze as the true cause of all my tragic heritage; no pale-faced and partially poisoned mother whose suicidal instincts have cursed me with the temptations of the artistic temperament. I regret that there was nothing in the range of our family much more racy than a remote and mildly impecunious uncle; and that I cannot do my duty as a true modern, by cursing everybody who made me whatever I am. I am not clear about what that is; but I am pretty sure that most of it is my own fault. And I am compelled to confess ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... promptly shut up the volumes of Diderot, and turn to the ease and soft gracefulness of Marivaux's Game of Love and Chance, to the forcible and concentrated sententiousness of Piron's Metromanie, to the salt and racy flavour of Le Sage's Turcaret. Gresset, again, and Destouches wrote at least two comedies that were really fit for the stage, and may be read with pleasure to-day. Neither of these compliments can fairly ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... personages of her amusing anecdotes, instead of being third-rate theatrical folk, shall be Earl Blank and the Baroness de Dash. The editors of society journals shall pay me a shilling a line for them. Jarman—yes, Jarman shall be the son of a South American millionaire. Vulgar? Nonsense! you mean racy. Minikin—he looks much more like forty than twenty—he shall be an eminent scientist. His head will then appear the natural size; his glass eye, the result of a chemical experiment, a touch of distinction; his uncompromising rudeness, a lovable characteristic. We will make him buy a yard of ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... the only readers of his published writings. They came to call him Bishop Bunyan. His native genius, his great human-heartedness and loving-kindness, his burning zeal and indomitable courage, his racy humor and kindling imagination, all vitalized by the spiritual force which came upon him through the encompassing atmosphere of devout Puritanism, were consecrated to the welfare of his fellow-men. His personal friend, Mr. Doe, describes him as "tall in stature, strong-boned, of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Essex will have none but Sir George Carew; whom, Naunton says, he hates, and wishes to oust from court. He and Elizabeth argue it out. He turns his back on her, and she gives him—or does not give him, for one has found so many of these racy anecdotes vanish on inspection into simple wind, that one believes none of them—a box on the ear; which if she did, she did the most wise, just, and practical thing which she could do with such a puppy. He claps his hand—or does not—to ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... There is a racy verve and vigor in Charles Reade's style, which, after the current inanities, is as inspiriting as a fine breeze on the upland; it tingles with vitality; he seems to bring to his work a superb physical strength, which he employs impartially ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was very like to the noise made on the verge of the Boer War. And your procedure seems to me as unaccountable as would have seemed the antics of those mobs if England had been plainly doomed to disaster and to vassalage. My guest here to-night, in the course of his very eloquent and racy speech, spoke of the need that he and you should preserve your 'free and independent manhood.' That seemed to me an irreproachable ideal. But I confess I was somewhat taken aback by my friend's scheme for realising ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... on Mary's really finely developed buttocks, giving him promise of great after-pleasure. He even begged me to leave her bottom-hole to his finger so that he frigged the bum-hole of the sister while he sucked the prick of the brother, a combination which afforded him the most racy delight, Mary was greatly excited, and spent most copiously in my mouth, while I quickly followed suit in the mouth of Mr. M., who did not allow a drop to be wasted. When we had reposed ourselves sufficiently, his lascivious touches and caresses and praises of ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... Its racy humour, its original imaginings, make it one of the freshest, breeziest ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... Windsor. Judge Haliburton was an early convert; and in 1837 he makes 'Sam Slick' harp again and again on the necessity of railways. 'A railroad from Halifax to the Bay of Fundy' is the burden of many of Sam's conversations, and its advantages are urged in his most racy dialect. But the world laughed at Haliburton's jokes and neglected his wisdom. Though in 1844 the British government directed the survey of a military road to unite Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec, and though ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... persuade papa that my health needs a sea voyage. He suggested the Continent—of course with a companion. But I have been clawed backwards and forwards on the Continent for years by Aunt Grizel, and have had enough. I chose Africa, because it sounds so nice and racy in novels, doesn't it? Fortunately papa's greatest friend, a parson and also an archaeologist, has a daughter out there. She paints, and lives on a farm somewhere on the veld in the Cape Colony, so I am allowed to go and stay with her ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... declines from the promise of his earlier efforts. The preface suggests great things; but they are not forthcoming. There is much careful finish, much sententious rhetoric, much elegant description; but there is little of racy humour (the play is a 'romantic comedy'), little of poetical freshness, little of lively flesh and blood portraiture, and more of melodramatic expedience than dramatic construction. Neither comedy nor ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... Devil is a mere prologue, intended to bring Napoleon and Ivan-angel on the stage and lay the foundation of the plot. The story-teller's keen sense of fun and humor is shown in many little touches, but he never means to be irreverent. The whole legend is set forth in the racy, idiomatic, highly elliptical language of the common Russian muzhik, and is therefore extremely difficult of translation; but I have tried to preserve, as far as possible, the spirit and flavor ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... about Irish sports and shoneen games the like of lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all to that. And of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a straw ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... amongst them several beautiful young girls. I finally engaged myself to my old Arithmetic master as teacher of Danish in his course for National school-mistresses. I found the work horribly dull, but there was one racy thing about it, namely, that I, the master, was three years younger than the youngest of my pupils; these latter were obliged to be at least 25, and consequently even at their youngest were quite ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... taking evidence on the subject; and the districts of London and Berkshire were allotted to him. His report, published in the following year, was a model of what a report should be. It was full of information, admirably classified and arranged, and was so racy,—by virtue of the facts brought to light, and the care taken to preserve the very words of the witnesses as they were spoken,—that the report may be read with interest by the most ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... so accustomed to the sea, and the relish of salt breezes, and the racy dance of little waves that crowd on one another, and the tidal delivery of delightful rubbish, that to fail of seeing the many works and plays and constant variance of her never wearying or weary friend was more than she could long put up with. She called upon Lord Keppel almost ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Whether it were the racy cleverness of the pictures or the unprecedented boldness of the text, the book stirred Europe of the fifteenth century in a way and with a rapidity it had never been stirred before. In the German actual acquaintance with it could then be but limited, though it ran through seventeen ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... Agricultural Labourers are the class of voters with which I am most familiar; and an intimate acquaintance with these men has taught me increasingly to admire their staunchness, their shrewdness, and their racy humour. Two or three of the old sayings come back to memory as I write. "More pigs and less parsons" must have been a survival from the days of Tithe. "The Black Recruiting Sergeant" was a nickname for a canvassing ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... revolutionary Encyclopaedia. Rousseau was sounding the first notes of his mad eloquence,—the wild revolt of a passionate and diseased genius against a world of falsities and wrongs. The salons of Paris, cloyed with other pleasures, alive to all that was racy and new, welcomed the pungent doctrines, and played with them as children play with fire, thinking no danger; as time went on, even embraced them in a genuine spirit of hope and goodwill for humanity. The Revolution began at the top,—in ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... work to be by far the most valuable and important Judge Haliburton has ever written. The exhaustless fund of humour—quiet, yet rich and racy, and at the same time overflowing with the milk of human kindness—which his writings display on one hand, and the wonderful knowledge of man's character, in all its countless varieties, which they exhibit on the other, have insured for them a high, and honourable, and enduring ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... to amuse children with, the language of thieves is peculiarly suitable, in so far that if ever the young people who devoured "Oliver Twist" had over among themselves any of the Dodger's and Charley Bates's racy expressions it was with a wholesome sense of its being highly improper; whereas one cannot imagine the little folk of to-day seeing any impropriety in an equally debased decoction of English—albeit somewhat more mildly drawn—when put into the mouths of children like themselves. Then, again, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... Hostilities, and for another, Bingo was on the Staff, and it would be so nice for him, poor dear, to have his wife near him in case he happened to get ... was "chipped" the proper technical term, or "potted"? The articles were intended to be the real thing—racy of the soil, don't you know? and full of "go" and atmosphere. Let it be said here that they achieved raciness. The London print in which they appeared came to be christened by the scoffer and the incredulous the Daily Whale—it swallowed and disgorged so many of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... great authors it was my fortune to meet at this important period,—all, though of unequal, yet congenial powers,—all of rich and wide, rather than aspiring genius,—all free to the extent of the horizon their eye took in,—all fresh with impulse, racy with experience; never to be lost sight of, or superseded, but always to be apprehended ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... lines are smooth, their images are spirited; but as well might the campaign itself have been conducted in the poet's study as its situations be deliberately transferred there to verse. The "Wallenstein's Camp" of Schiller is not poetry, but racy and sparkling pamphleteering. Its rhyming does not prevent it from belonging to the historical treatment of periods that are picturesque with many passions and interests, that go clad in jaunty regimental costumes, and require not to be idealized, but simply to be described. Goethe, in his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various |
