"Acrobat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as you please," cried Cornelia, naughtily. She was standing up, cup in hand, but even as she spoke she subsided on to a footstool by Miss Briskett's side, with a sudden lithe collapse of the body, which made that good lady gasp in dismay. She had never seen anybody but a professional acrobat move so quickly or unexpectedly, and felt convinced that the tea must have been spilt, and crumbs scattered wholesale over the carpet. But no! not even a drop had fallen into the saucer, and there sat Cornelia nibbling at an undamaged sandwich with little, strong, white ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Whist! Was that a shillin' he gave ye? That makes ten ye have now, thin. Bun like a hare an' put ut on Acrobat at the best ye ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... he grasped the cable with one hand, slowing himself, turned with the skill of an acrobat, and landed catlike, feet first, on the stat-magnetic walk ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... barillet) who endeavours for a year to fill the hermit's little cask at running streams, and endeavours in vain, finds it brimming the moment one tear of true penitence falls into the vessel. Most exquisite in its feeling is the tale of the Tombeur de Notre-Dame—a poor acrobat—a jongleur turned monk—who knows not even the Pater noster or the Credo, and can only offer before our Lady's altar his tumbler's feats; he is observed, and as he sinks worn-out and faint before the shrine, the Virgin ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... dinner; and also a strange contrivance called a concerto, put together to enable the player to exhibit within a brief space the utmost possible variety of finger gymnastics. To learn to perform these feats one had to devote his whole lifetime to practising them, just like any circus acrobat; and so his mind became atrophied, and a naive and elemental vanity was all that ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... of your "higher nature." When my father, for instance, who has long suspected the soundness of your doctrines, laid down one of his lurid hell-fire premises as an active reason for seeking salvation, I observed that you showed the agility of a spiritual acrobat in avoiding the conflict. ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... footpath, they went as a crow would fly across the country. Hedges, trees, and streams were cleared at a bound, and under these conditions Ben Zoof felt that he could have overstepped Montmartre at a single stride. The earth seemed as elastic as the springboard of an acrobat; they scarcely touched it with their feet, and their only fear was lest the height to which they were propelled would consume the time which they were saving by their short cut ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... impossible, we offered a large reward to this member if he were proven right. We sent to the theater and found the acrobat in question. He had just finished his act and kindly ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... not know it so well, would be startling. This change is known as a 'complete metamorphosis.' The dragon-fly is another insect with a complete metamorphosis. How the dragon-fly moults you will see in the illustration (fig. 1): even an acrobat might envy him! ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... occultism," abnormal and egotistic though it be, may develop marvellous powers, at which we may wonder as we do at the skill of an acrobat or the pugilism of Sullivan. It cultivates a will power and a spirituality by which miraculous phenomena may be shown, but they are of little real value compared to the nobler miracle of healing those whom physicians have surrendered to death, and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... had a glorious gallop after Starlight and his gang, When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat; How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang To the strokes of Mountaineer and Acrobat! Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath, Close beside them through the ti-tree scrub we dashed; And the golden-tinted fern-leaves, how they rustled underneath! And the honeysuckle osiers, how ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... other massive stones, but with its end protruding below the rest. So, without wasting any time, I leaped up and caught hold of it with both hands, and then, adopting the tactics of a gymnast, I began slowly working my way through the hole feet foremost, like an acrobat going over a horizontal bar. This feat, which required great muscular strength, flexibility, and tenaciousness, was the very hardest physical performance I ever accomplished, for, besides being unable to get a firm grip on it, I found, to my ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... courage, he made a bound forward that might have roused the envy of an acrobat, and cleared not only the space between but the parapet beyond, coming down with an awful crash into the midst of a certain box-garden, which was the special pride of the owner of ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... sinew, thews and sinews, physique; pith, pithiness; virtility, vitality. athletics, athleticism^; gymnastics, feats of strength. adamant, steel, iron, oak, heart of oak; iron grip; grit, bone. athlete, gymnast, acrobat; superman, Atlas, Hercules, Antaeus^, Samson, Cyclops, Goliath; tower of strength; giant refreshed. strengthening &c v.; invigoration, refreshment, refocillation^. [Science of forces] dynamics, statics. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... been a good political acrobat, and was on more sides of more questions than anybody else of those times. Though connected with the White-Cap affair by which Alfred lost his eyesight and his life, he proved an alibi, or spasmodic paresis, ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... creature heard its master's voice and saw his form—for his features must have been invisible against the strong light—the scowl vanished from its little visage. With a shriek of joy it sprang like an acrobat from a spring-board and plunged into the hermit's bosom—to the alarm of the Malay, who thought this was a furious attack. We need not say that Van der Kemp received his faithful little servant kindly, ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... is to lose!" he exclaimed as he died; and artist he was, but in the Roman sense; one that enveloped in the same contempt the musician, acrobat and actor. It was the artist that played the flute while gladiators died and lovers embraced; it was the ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... than done," I thought to myself; but I was much mistaken. Suddenly the woman bounded at least three feet into the air and caught one of the spreading boughs in her large flat hands; then came a swing that would have filled an acrobat with envy—and she was ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... Not for his health. Half an hour with a skipping-rope would be equally beneficial to his liver. No; in nine cases out of ten he does it to prove to his friends and relations that he is not the mild, steady-going person they have always thought him. Observe the music-hall acrobat as he prepares to swing from the roof by his eyelids. His gaze sweeps the house. 'It isn't true,' it seems to say. 'I'm ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the front trench which enables Tommy to fire "over the top." In rainy weather you have to be an acrobat to even stand on it on account of ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... blue instead of white, and got very little applause. But after the two days Horace appeared again, and those who sat close to the stage remarked an expression of beatific happiness on that young acrobat's face even when he was twisting breathlessly in the air an the middle of his amazing and original shoulder swing. After that performance he laughed at the elevator man and dashed up the stairs to the flat five steps at a time—and then tiptoed ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... received in the latter attitude by the public. Some such thought as this must have been in the mind of the man who conceived the idea of riding a bicycle on the ceiling instead of on the floor. The "trick" originated with the Swiss acrobat Di Batta, who, being too old to undertake such a performance himself, trained two of his pupils to do it, and they appeared with their wheel in Busch Circus in Berlin. The wheel, of course, ran on a track from which it was suspended in such a way that it could not fall, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... night at the Royal Circus. Ricardo Harringtoni, the wonderful new acrobat of whom everybody was talking, stood high above the crowd on his platform. His marvellous performance on the swinging horizontal bar was about to begin. Richard Harrington (for it was he) was troubled. Since he had entered on his new profession—as a disguise from the police who were still ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... novel-readers constitute a huge hippodrome, where, if you can succeed in amusing your spectators or make them gasp in amazement at your rhetorical legerdemain, they will applaud vociferously, and pet you, as they would a graceful danseuse, or a dexterous acrobat, or a daring equestrian; but if you attempt to educate or lecture them, you will either declaim to empty benches or be hissed down. They expect you to help them ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... up to Will, tossed the boy a half-penny, and then began to laugh heartily, at the rapid contortions of the little acrobat. ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... not leave the yacht, permitted Tagg and Royson to accept the proffered civility. They passed a pleasant evening, and saw the female acrobat negotiate a thirty-feet jump, head downward, taken through space by the automobile. Then they elected to walk to No. 3. Basin, a distance of a mile and a half. It was about eleven o'clock and a fine night. The docks road, a thoroughfare cut ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... to explain to himself. He was not in love with Mademoiselle Olympe. He had no wish to speak to her, or to hear her speak. Nothing could have been easier, and nothing further from his desire, than to know her personally. A Van Twiller personally acquainted with a strolling female acrobat! Good heavens! That was something possible only with the discovery of perpetual motion. Taken from her theatrical setting, from her lofty perch, so to say, on the trapeze-bar, Olympe Zabriski would have ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... desire a sword-swallower against an Indian Princess. Most of the fat women and all the dwarfs that I have known came to my acquaintance when in company with my grandfather. As a young man, it was said, he once ran away from home to join a circus as an acrobat, having acquired the trick of leaping upon a running horse. I fancy that his knack of throwing us to his shoulder by a double somersault was a recollection of his early days. You may imagine with what awe we looked ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... As the acrobat who has mastered every branch of his art, from the spidery contortions of the India-rubber man to the double somersault and the flying trapeze, is to the well-developed individual of ordinary muscular habits, so is the language ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... The young acrobat finally seemed to be satisfied with his shoes, and nodded his readiness to his two partners. In the first part of the program the three worked together as the "Lascalla Brothers," though there was no real relationship. But the name showed well on the bills, and, as ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... came upon the old Patriarch. He was standing with his back to the wall, facing out and back, for here the ledge he had been following pinched out, and even he, champion acrobat of the cliffs, could neither climb up nor find a way down. For several minutes we faced each other, ten yards apart. I had heard that mountain sheep never attack men, and that even the big leaders never use their massive, battering ram heads to injure ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... fingers closed around the weapon, and he clutched it convulsively, leaping to his feet like an acrobat. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... sodden impact of a bundle of damp clothes. There was a cry; they thought him killed—Vandover had seen his head gashed against a sharp angle of iron—but he jumped up with sudden agility, clambering up the slope of the deck with the strength and rapidity of an acrobat. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... having partially recovered from his fright, was to examine the plank from which, like an acrobat from his spring-board, he had ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... bearded man continued: "You may not know it, but she is a dancer of some repute, a circumstance which she owes entirely to me. I picked her up, a mere child in the streets of London, turning cart-wheels for a living. I took her and trained her as an acrobat. She was known on the stage as Toby the Tumbler. Everyone took her for a boy. Later, she developed a talent for dancing. It was then that I decided to marry her. She desired the marriage even more than I did." Again ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... his chest. It was too dangerous to pull in to the bank at that point, and he tried a delicate experiment. He sought to crawl upon his little raft and lie there flat upon his back, a task demanding the skill of an acrobat. ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... He thought that I was going out to eat husks with the swine as the Prodigal Son did, and told me not to take it into my mind ever again to cross the threshold of my father's house in my future capacity as acrobat or bareback rider, as he was pleased to express it. His door was not open to such scum! Well, I'll fight it down! Only I'm sorry for my poor, dear mother.—You can't imagine with what abysmal hatred a man of his kind considers the theatre and everything ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... acrobat as well as a dancer, and he was quick on his feet. He had just turned, unexpectedly, an intellectual somersault, but he landed cleanly and without a stagger. "Come, Miss Devereux," he said, "that's your line." ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... old and fairly leaping out of his mother's arms. Two years with the teacher and Nathan is probably ready for a debut as a wonder child. The critics are kind. If his parents are very poor Nathan may go from town to town for awhile being exhibited like a trained poodle or a tiny acrobat. The further he gets from home the more severe his critics become, and Nathan and his mother hurry back to the old teachers, who tell them that Nathan must still practice long and hard as well as do something to build up his general education. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... Bloxford. "I suppose there's nothing you can do in the professional way? You'd make a good acrobat, or—well, you'd shape into several things." He looked the figure up and down again, just as he would have examined an animal offered for his inspection. "But we'll see about that later on. Thirty bob a week. How will ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... fastidious observer of men and manners, was a cloistered monk or any obscure individual whatever was an idea to be immediately dispelled from the mind, for that the Annals was composed by such a man would have been about as incomprehensible an occurrence, as it would be impossible to conceive that an acrobat who exercises gymnastic tricks upon the backs of galloping horses in an American circus could discharge the functions of a First Lord of the Treasury or a Justice in the High Court of Judicature, or that a pantaloon ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... that the ordinary mortal doesn't wish to be reminded of. Some day—if I don't turn stoker or acrobat beforehand, and give up peddling in the emotions—some day I shall write music to it. That would be a melodrama ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... for he could scarcely scrape together eight thousand francs a year; his mother still being alive and possessing a life-interest in a valuable estate in Alencon. This young man had already, during previous visits to Paris, tried his rope, like an acrobat, and had recognized the great vice of the social replastering of 1830. He meant to turn it to his own profit, following the example of the longest heads of the bourgeoisie. This requires a rapid glance on one of the effects of ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... hear it: I only saw it on a program. But it's clear shes an acrobat. It explains how she saved Percival. And it ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... let grandmamma go up in peace, upon Mother Carey's arm, and then a general romp and scurry all the way up the stairs, ending by Jock's standing on one leg on the top post of the baluster, like an acrobat, an achievement which made even his father so giddy that he peremptorily desired it never to be attempted again, to the great relief of both the ladies. Then, coming into the drawing-room, Babie perched herself on his knee, and began, without the slightest preparation, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the Count, his hopes raised high, followed in hot pursuit. He failed to recognize the ground they were traversing, and presently they came to a high wall, over which Martha scrambled with the agility of an acrobat. The Count, in attempting to imitate her, damaged his knee and tore his clothes, but he also landed safely on the other side. Then on they went, Martha with unabated energy, the Count horribly exhausted, and beginning to think of turning back, when they were abruptly brought to a ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... the antithesis of Mr. Chamberlain in every point, who is also a standing monument of the advantage of being misunderstood. Mr. Bernard Shaw is always represented by those who disagree with him, and, I fear, also (if such exist) by those who agree with him, as a capering humorist, a dazzling acrobat, a quick-change artist. It is said that he cannot be taken seriously, that he will defend anything or attack anything, that he will do anything to startle and amuse. All this is not only untrue, but it is, glaringly, the opposite of the truth; it is as wild as ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... said Tilda wearily. "I dunno. If a body can't do without father an' mother, I'll make up a couple to please you, same as I made up a aunt for Glasson. Maggs's Circus is where I belong to, an' there 'twas Tilda, or 'The Child Acrobat' ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to be wholly disappointed. Fate had one crumb of consolation for me, for I saw at last a chat baby. He was a quiet, well-behaved little fellow, with streaks on throat and breast, and dull yellow underparts. His manners were subdued, and gave no hint of the bumptious acrobat he might live ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... were the fiercest and most sullen-looking of all. They did not join in the general barking and uproar, but kept their heads buried in the straw. Once, as we were watching them, away off in a remote end of the building, an acrobat began his performance of walking on a rope and jumping through rings, high up in the air. Then these hounds suddenly lifted themselves erect, and, fixing their sharp eyes on that little red and blue speck of a man suspended in the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... still sitting on the table, abruptly put a hand out for the weapon that lay beside him. But the next movement was the most unexpected of all, for the prince standing in the doorway passed suddenly from the dignity of a statue to the swiftness of an acrobat and rent the revolver out of ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... be, in some out-of-the-way part of the building, certain poles and sticks and parallel bars with which feats of activity might be practised, but no one ever asked for them now-a-days, and a man, when he became an Acrobat, did so with a view either to the whist or the cook, or possibly to the social excellences of the club. Louis Trevelyan was an Acrobat;—as ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... He is one type of the successful man of our day. Where thousands of better and stronger men struggle vainly for fair recognition, he and his kind are glorified. In comparison with a really energetic man, he is an acrobat. The crowd stares at him and applauds, and there is nothing he cares for so much as that ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... to such a extent on corsets. I'm all for women myself. I believe they're the comin' man, but I must confess, if I'm to speak the truth, it ain't for the simple, uninfected, childlike mind o' the male persuasion to foller their figaries, unless he's some of a trained acrobat. ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... exercise can almost transform the human body. We go one step higher. The experience of centuries shows that gymnastics exist for the soul as well as for the body. But what the soul's gymnastics are is our secret. What is it that gives to the sailor the sight of an eagle, that endows the acrobat with the skill of a monkey, and the wrestler with muscles of iron? Practice and habit. Then why should not we suppose the same possibilities in the soul of the man as well as in his body? Perhaps on the grounds of modern science—which ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... which the occurrence had turned out of its previous course. Sometimes anger carries off the arrested current; and so prevents laughter. An instance of this was lately furnished me by a friend who had been witnessing the feats at Franconi's. A tremendous leap had just been made by an acrobat over a number of horses. The clown, seemingly envious of this success, made ostentatious preparations for doing the like; and then, taking the preliminary run with immense energy, stopped short on reaching ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the Moon," declared Gladys, when she had been restored to the perpendicular, viewing the shaky stool with disfavor. "Let Sahwah be it, she's more of an acrobat." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... booms along. Owing to his great strength, an inverted, pendent blossom, from which he must cling upside down, has no more terrors for him than a trapeze for the trained acrobat. His long tongue—if he is one of the largest of our sixty-two species of Bombus—can suck almost any flower unless it is especially adapted to night-flying sphinx moths, but can he drain this? He is the truest benefactor of the European Columbine ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... it was a forecast; it is now the history of a triumph. By prolonged scientific practice, undertaken with every possible regard to safety, on soaring and gliding machines, the Wrights became master pilots and conquerors of the air. Their success had in it no element of luck; it was earned, as an acrobat earns his skill. So confident did they become that to the end their machines were all machines of an unstable equilibrium, dependent for their safety on the skill and quickness of the pilot. Their triumph was a triumph of mind and character. Other men had more than their ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... of interesting by-products. The maxim applies to fat. The fat was in the fire with a vengeance. A great sheet of flame rushed out and up. Shoeblossom leaped back with a readiness highly creditable in one who was not a professional acrobat. The covering of the mantelpiece caught fire. The flames ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... scale, and becoming the wife of a real live young nobleman, when she sensibly accepts a considerable sum of money, consents to forego her action for breach of promise, and finally marries a highly respectable acrobat, and becomes the landlady of the "Man of Kent." The earlier portion is entertaining, especially to those who are not altogether ignorant of some of the personages, sketches of whom are drawn by the author, Mr. CHARLES HOLLIS, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... her eyes would brighten (but not at the print), and subsiding into the arm-chair she would suck back again the soul of the moment; or, for sometimes she was restless, would pull out book after book and swing across the whole space of her life like an acrobat from bar to bar. She had had her moments. Meanwhile, the great clock on the landing ticked and Sandra would hear time accumulating, and ask ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... he is a savage. He has not the wants of the civilized man, and therefore he does not wait to supply them before he seeks to gratify others. When man rises in the scale of civilization, his whole nature rises. You can't mount a ladder piecemeal; your head will go up first, unless you are an acrobat, and choose to go up feet foremost; but even if you are Gabriel Ravel, your whole body must needs ascend together. The savage is comfortable, not according to your notions of comfort, but according to his own. Comfort is not positive, but relative. If, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... stand it no longer. "Look here, Harry," I said, "if you must know it, she looks upon you as an acrobat—a paid performer." ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... sang in a soft monotone, while they pulled hard for the mouth of the bay. The priest and I were fairly comfortable in the stern, the steersman perched behind us on the very edge of the combing, balancing himself to the rise and fall of the boat as an acrobat on a rope. I laid my head on my bag and fell asleep before the sea had been reached. The last sound in my ears was the voice of Pere Victorien reciting ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... olive green, nor his cloak with its morocco collar, nor the striped blue cotton shirt. In this queer figure—so original that we cannot rub it out—how many divers personalities we come across! In the first place, what an acrobat, what a circus, what a battery, all in one, is the man himself, his vocation, and his tongue! Intrepid mariner, he plunges in, armed with a few phrases, to catch five or six thousand francs in the frozen seas, in the domain of the red ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Consolidated Circus!" cried Pepper. "The one and only aggregation of stupendous wonders on the face of the globe! The marvelous twisting and death-defying acrobat! Walk up and see the blood-curdling exhibition! It will cost you but the small sum of a dime, ten cents; children double price, and no grandfathers unaccompanied by their parents admitted. Line will form on the left and everybody will please have his cash ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... Clown was almost as good an acrobat, or jumper, as ever. When punched in the chest, the Clown would bang his cymbals together. And when the strings were pulled, out shot the arms and legs like those of a Jumping Jack, only in ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... I would make a beautiful wooden puppet that should know how to dance, to fence, and to leap like an acrobat. With this puppet I would travel about the world to earn a piece of bread and a glass of wine. What ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various |
