Lacking war, I sought distraction in a matter close at handone which possessed quite all the vivacity of war without its violence.

Edgar Quinet retained all his lofty judgment, Noël Parfait all his mental vivacity, Yvan all his vigorous and intelligent penetration, Labrousse all his animation.

The mere consciousness of the value of light to their costumes, no less than the elixir in their nostrils, gave vivacity to their features.

When she spoke to him, I felt her voice shiver, if I may use the word, and he, he glorious writer, surfeited with triumphs, exhausted by his labors, seemed, as soon as he felt the radiance of her glance of ingenuous idolatry, to recover that vivacity, that elasticity of impression, which is the sovereign grace of youthful lovers.

This is one proof, among a variety of others, that the despotism under which the French have groaned for the last three years, has much subdued the vivacity and impatience of the national character; for I know of no period in their history, when such a combination of personal suffering and political discontent, as exists at present, would not have produced some serious convulsion.

Even in childhood he displayed the vivacity of mind and the irreverent spirit which were to make him the most entertaining anti-clerical writer of his period.

Ella, a pretty girl, whose dark hair and eyes suggested a normal vivacity, spoke to Bobby.

He was then a little bent, but preserved in conversation the vivacity of his prime.

She never lost her vivacity, never her desire to please.

Easelmann followed him with a look half stealthy, half comical, as he saw the unusual vivacity of the reigning beauty when in his immediate society.

He sometimes trifles with his readers, or tires of a subject (from not being urged on by the stimulus of immediate sympathy)but in conversation he is all life and animation, combining the vivacity of the school-boy with the resources of the wit and the taste of the scholar.

If she were not perfectly happy with a husband who took no pains to sympathize with her, who repressed instead of encouraging the natural vivacity of her nature, who never went abroad with her to places where every one was accustomed to go, still she did not lay the cause at my door.

A fit of caprice induced Rousseau to throw up this situation, and he then taught music in Chambéry for a living, studied hard, read Voltaire, Descartes, Locke, Hobbes, Leibnitz, and Puffendorf, and evinced an uncommon vivacity and talent for conversation, which made him a favorite in social circles.

Possibly her exceeding vivacity and wit seemed superficial,as witty French people then seemed to both Germans and English.

It is true, she begged me to forget her vivacity, which she claimed was due to her love, and she insisted that I should continue to give her good counsel.

His countrymen, not having the vivacity of our ladies, listened in silence till he had ended, when an aged chief stepped forth, and remarked that he too, when a young man, had visited their Great Father Washington, in New-York, who had received him as a son, and treated him with all the delicacies that his country afforded, but had given him no ice.

They illustrate the wonderful mental vivacity of their venerable writer, and in this respect are useful; but still more useful in showing how cheerfully she bore the burden of her years, and with what intellectual serenity she looked forward to her end.

We cannot even contend that the sun has the effect of inflaming the imaginations of men, and infusing into them either vivacity or a poetic spirit.

Two opposing and frenzied lines of traffic clashed along the road that led through it and became a noisy jumble in the little square at its centre, a disordered mass of camions, artillery, heavy supply wagons, field kitchens, ambulances, with motorcycles at its edges like excited terriers, lending a staccato vivacity to its uproar.

I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.

And then the applause ceased, for Paris is not Naples, and it is not Madrid, and the red curtain definitely hid the stage, and the theatre hummed with animated chatter as elegant as Diaz' music, and my ear, that loves the chaste vivacity of the French tongue, was caressed on every side by its cadences.

For her chief stimulant Lesbia had recourse to the teapot; but there were occasions when she found that something more than tea was needed to maintain that indispensable vivacity of manner which Lady Kirkbank called concert pitch.

It is astonishing to mark the vivacity and clearness of the letters she wrote at this advanced period of her life.

Those who don't care for the gay will find in these sketches the grave; those who prefer vivacity to seriousness will meet with what they want; those who appreciate all will discover each.

Conscious of considerable powers in observing nature, while he was deficient in that liveliness of fancy which is necessary to produce vivacity of dialogue, Shadwell affected, or perhaps entertained, a profound veneration for the memory of Ben Jonson, and proposed him as his model in the representation of such characters as were to be marked by humour, or an affectation of singularity of manners, speech, and behaviour.