"Light-footed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jupiter the Nymphs began to inhabit fountains and forests and mountains; while the Fauns, accoupling with the Nymphs, formed light-footed bands that roamed the woods together. Meantime I spent a happy life, tasting at will the clusters of the wild grapes and the lips of the laughing Faun-girls. I enjoyed deep and restful slumbers amid the lush grass; and I would celebrate on my rustic flute Jupiter, Saturn's successor, ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... was outrageous at this contempt of his authority, got his hat with the intention of compelling her to return and retract, in their presence, what she had said; but the daughter, being the more light-footed of the two, reached home before he could overtake her, where, backed by her mother, she maintained her resolution, and succeeded, ere long, in bringing the father over to ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... deceived in their sense of safety. Among the heath and bushes in a narrow pass, circumscribed, on the one side, by a steep mountain, and on the other by a small lake, which skirted the path, for road there was not, lay in ambush two hundred well-armed and light-footed Highlanders. The youths, or volunteers, were in the rear of the regiment; as they marched fearlessly through the deep solitude of this wild district, the Highlanders sprang forwards from their ambuscade; and before the young soldiers ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... pollocks hang drying in the sun—of tar and tan and twine—where nets and cordage lie spread upon low walls and open spaces—gives to Newlyn an odor all its own; but aloft, above the village air, spring is dancing, sweet-scented, light-footed in the hedgerows, through the woods and on the wild moors which stretch inland away. There the gold of the gorse flames in many a sudden sheet and splash over the wastes whereon last year's ling-bloom, all sere and gray, makes a sad-colored world. But ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... perfect. By great good fortune I have found a housekeeper no less to my mind, a low-voiced, light-footed woman of discreet age, strong and deft enough to render me all the service I require, and not afraid of solitude. She rises very early. By my breakfast-time there remains little to be done under the roof save dressing of meals. Very rarely ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... taking the pies out of the oven. Do not suppose, however, that Mrs. Poyser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well-shapen, light-footed; the most conspicuous article in her attire was an ample checkered linen apron, which almost covered her skirt; and nothing could be plainer or less noticeable than her cap and gown, for there was no weakness of which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... as light-footed as a stag. She had never seen any child run so quickly. He threw up his straight legs that his heels touched his thighs every time. The wind blew his broad-brimmed sailor hat back, then he tore it off and ran on bareheaded, he was ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... and grotesque creatures in the starlight; and truly they seemed to smell their way as beasts smell; and they were as light-footed and as noiseless, slinking from bush to bush, lurking motionless in shadows, nosing, listening, prowling on velvet pads to the very edges of ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... living-room. He did not hear Dorothy Parkman's light step up the walk. He did not know that she had paused at sight of him sitting there, and had put her hand to her throat, and then that she had almost run, light-footed, into the house, again very much as if she were trying to run away from herself. But he did hear her voice two minutes later, speaking just ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... same character. Nothing could be more crisp and dainty. It seems to depict elves romping through the forest by moonlight. Nor is it without romantic moods, as if love-making were going on even among these light-footed, light-hearted revelers. But when this is said, it still is all touch and go; a breath, a sigh, the iridescence of the moonglade on a woodland lake—then ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... does all that appeals to our nature. And there is much that is lovely in this idea of nature—for do not the seasons dance, and is it not in that ancient measure we have already spoken of, the trochaic? Long Winter comes with heavy foot, and Spring is the light-footed. Again, Summer is long, and Autumn short and cheery; and so our phrase begins again and again. We all know with what periodicity everything in nature dances, and how the smallest flower is a marvel of recurring rhymes and rhythms, with perfume for a melody. How Shakespeare's Beatrice charms ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... finding her retreat intercepted by the light-footed soldier, confronted him manfully, and having sustained a heavy blow without injury, she knitted her brows, as is the fashion of the animal when incensed, and making use at once of her fore-paws and her unwieldy strength, wrenched the weapon out of the assailant's hand, overturned him ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a character beyond what the name bestowed), and then they arranged their prayer-books, and apparently speculated as to the possible text that morning to be given forth from the pulpit. But it seemed to them all that an exceedingly bulky object had passed as guardian of the light-footed damsels preceding him. Though none of the ladies had looked up as he passed, they were conscious of a stature and a circumference which they had deemed to be entirely beyond the reach of the Tinleys, and a scornful notion of the Tinleys having hired a guardsman, made ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... comes out a little way into the light, it is a furtive-looking little four-footed creature whose fur shines with a reddish tinge; there is another, peeping out from the sandhills, and another and another! They are all over, but so silent and light-footed are they that it is difficult to believe them to be anything but shadows. A wave of the hand and they have disappeared! They are jackals, inquisitively watching us with their bright eyes. Nothing to be afraid of. They dare not attack a ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... in their several well-filled pigeon-holes in her big, old-fashioned desk. She turned and paced slowly up and down the long parlor, a tall woman, commanding of aspect, yet of a winningly attractive manner, erect and light-footed, still imposingly handsome. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... doctor and the confessor. But he was jovial with them. Did he not see a light gleaming in the future beyond the veil? The pall that is like lead for other men was thin and translucent for him; the light-footed, irresistible delights of youth danced ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... Rachel, soft-voiced, light-footed as a sister of mercy, moved about in her pale gray woollen gown, with a few snowdrops in her breast, her face more thoughtful and sad, yet sweeter than I had ever seen it. She had a work-basket beside her, and a book, while she sat by the head of my bed, but I saw that she occupied herself ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... the next morning when the boatmen sat ready with their oars, and Captain Ossolo stood in the dinghy beside Brazier's boat, which swung astern of the Tessa, down into whose hold scores of light-footed women ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... always waked early. So did their neighbors, the crows and song-sparrows and robins, the light-footed foxes and squirrels in the woods. When John Hilton waked, before five o'clock, an hour later than usual because he had sat up so late, he opened the house door and came out into the yard, crossing the short green turf hurriedly as if the ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... their feet and fled down the roadway after the light-footed Ah-eeda. Behind them the screams of the green man made the night hideous. "Damn him!" panted Ward; "he'll have the whole town on our heels!" Providentially, at that moment the road debouched into the great square. This they ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... Slender, light-footed, the train of her evening gown switched over her arm, beneath her flowing orange and white-flowered satin cloak, she ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... so rank and heavy that it settled in the hollows and clung tenaciously to the bushes and crevices in the fence. I thought I ought to have caught a remnant of it as I passed that way some minutes later, but I did not. But I suppose it was not that the light-footed fox so impressed himself upon the ground he ran over, but that the sense of the hound was so keen. To her sensitive nose these tracks steamed like hot cakes, and they would not have cooled off so as to be undistinguishable for several hours. For the time being, she had but one ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... solid shoulder against the door of the room of single combat. It gave way, and in the instant that she entered her eye caught the scene—the Board standing about with open watches; Dempsey Donovan in his shirt sleeves dancing, light-footed, with the wary grace of the modern pugilist, within easy reach of his adversary; Terry O'Sullivan standing with arms folded and a murderous look in his dark eyes. And without slacking the speed of her entrance she leaped forward with a scream—leaped in time ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... in one direction, and Miss Clare tripped lightly along in the other. Percivale darted into the house, and told Roger, who snatched up his hat, and bounded after her. Already she was out of sight; but he, following light-footed, overtook her in the crescent. It was, however, only after persistent entreaty that he prevailed on her to allow him to ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... in turn, she made several mistakes about ages, and they roared with laughter. When she came to my light-footed friend of the windmill, she said, "This is Leo, and he's old enough to be ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... had joined Roland near Mialet, and again descended upon the low country, marching through the villages along the valley of the Vidourle, carrying off arms and devastating churches. Broglie sent two strong bodies of troops to intercept them; but the light-footed insurgents had ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... see her," she said, "not that she was not here, for she passed me after all the men, walking very cautiously to make no noise; and when she was in the corridor she ran—she was young and light-footed. I could ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... wrinkled old dame remarked, in the flowery language of her people, that, as the figure of the girl was slender as the willow, and her feet small and light as those of the wood spirits that return to the land in the spring, surely she could out-dance Pierre La Chene, who had already out-worn the light-footed Jeanette and the beautiful Katie. Pierre shouted to his partner to make a start. Surely now she must be discovered ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... Nuttie was light-footed and dexterous handed, and accustomed to active amusements, so that, under the tuition of her cousins, she became a promising pupil, and thawed rapidly, even ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... light-footed, his father encouraged him to run in the Olympic race. "Yes," said he, "if there were any kings there to run ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... appearance here about six months ago, and contrived to pick up a living in the village, one can hardly tell how. Now appealing to the charity of old Rachael Strong, the laundress—a dog-lover by profession; now winning a meal from the light-footed and open-hearted lasses at the Rose; now standing on his hind-legs to extort, by sheer beggary, a scanty morsel from some pair of "drowthy cronies," or solitary drover, discussing his dinner or supper on the alehouse-bench; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... dive, a leap, a run. But in golf half your time was spent in solemnly walking—toddling, she chose to call it—from point to point. This was, no doubt, excellent for the health, but she preferred swiftness. But then she was only a light-footed girl, not ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... in looking from face to face, striving, to recognise some of her husband's friends of earlier days. She fully expected to see Smith or some of his friends fall from their saddles, as they could be little accustomed to manoeuvring such light-footed steeds, but she was forced to admit that Smith rode well and his officers kept their seats. She had so much to observe, so much to think about, she hardly noticed that Smith rode constantly by her carriage, pointing out ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... said to his goats. "Now I must have something too, and you will find enough more down below. Come along!" Whereupon he gave a loud whistle, and the whole flock started away, the liveliest always ahead, and first of all light-footed Swallow, who was to meet something unexpected to-day. She sprang down from stone to stone and across many a cleft in the rocks, but all at once she could go no farther—directly in front of her suddenly stood a chamois and gazed with curiosity into her face. This had never happened to Swallow ...
— Moni the Goat-Boy • Johanna Spyri et al
... worse, she'd had all my little property transferred to her beforehand. 'You're an educated man,' she said to me. 'You can always get your living.' She settled my business with that. A venerable bishop once said to me: 'One of your wives was lame, but the other was too light-footed.' ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... long time looking in at the window, watching the light-footed girl as she set the table in the middle of the sun-lighted kitchen floor. The kettle hissed, the meat sizzled, sending up a delicious odor; a hen stood in the open door and sang a sort of cheery half-human song, while to and fro moved ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... an animal, not a human shape. And it was light-footed and swift and noiseless—and it was white. It had, indeed, every distinguishing trait of Cookie's phantom pig. Only it was not a pig. My brief shadowy glimpse of it had told me that. I knew what it was not, but what ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... but with no fraction of a minute to spare. We could hear the pad-pad-pad of the light-footed runners close upon us, following now by the noise we made; and on our left the air was trembling to the thunder of the mounted men coming at a break-neck ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... to me for the first time in the person of a slender, light-footed little girl, whose name and personality secretly haunted my brain for ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... they had to drag themselves,—rocks which were to be climbed on the one side with much labour and pain, for the purpose of an equally precarious descent upon the other; all these, and many such interruptions, were surmounted by the light-footed and half-naked mountaineer with an ease and velocity which excited the surprise and envy of Captain Dalgetty, who, encumbered by his head-piece, corslet, and other armour, not to mention his ponderous jack-boots, found himself at ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... full, twinkling still through faint mists, its shining surface was ruffled faintly by a light-footed breeze. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... the front hitherto unsuspected energies. Steve certainly never in all his life ran like he did on that particular occasion. Why, some of the delighted Chester boys boasted that he fairly flew, as though he had wings suddenly developed; though of course those light-footed pursuers ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... in words of the loveliness of Griselda. She was as pure as the dew which gemmed the forest, as sweet-voiced as the birds, as light-footed and timid as the deer which started at the hunters' coming. Then her heart was so tender and good, she was so meek and gentle, that to love her was of itself a blessing; and to be in her presence was like basking in the beams of the ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... and pleasant light-footed Osgar, we used to be listening to the music of the wolves through the end of the cold night. It is well the brown deer sleeps with its hide to the hollow, hidden as if in the earth, through the end ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... "Nay, they were light-footed eno' when they saw what was to do, and left us three to die like rats in a hole." Then ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... be diaphanous. The one he saw was a creature of color and warmth and definiteness. Life, sweet and mocking, flowed through her radiantly. His heart sang within him, for the woman he loved out of a world of beautiful women was coming to him, light-footed as Daphne, the rhythm of the morning ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... seen, and night shut them in. An hour after the sun had set, the wind fell to a light air, that just kept steerage-way on the ship. Fortunately, the John was not only fast, but she minded her helm, as a light-footed girl turns in a lively dance. I never was in a better-steering ship, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... higher, to the stunted growth of numberless Alpine plants, whose hardy natures found a congenial temperature in the icy atmosphere of the more elevated regions. These dreary solitudes seemed to be nearly abandoned by the brute creation as well as by man. The light-footed vicuna, roaming in its native state, might be sometimes seen looking down from some airy cliff, where the foot of the hunter dared not venture. But instead of the feathered tribes whose gay plumage sparkled in the deep glooms of the tropical forests, the adventurers ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... in the path, protecting the retreat with his single arm. It was true, that so tall and powerful a man, sheathed in armor and on horseback, had a great advantage against the wild Highlanders, who only wore a shirt and a plaid, with a round target upon the arm; but they were lithe, active, light-footed men, able to climb like goats on the crags around him, and holding their lives ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... trail being now a mere ditch and chain of floating logs where no vehicle could pass, and the man himself seemed frightened as he led the way from trunk to float and puddle to corduroy, sometimes balancing himself on a revolving log, or again plunging nearly to his waist in vegetable muck; but the light-footed girl behind had the footstep of a bird, and hopped as if from twig to twig, and seemed to slide where he would sink; and the man often turned in terror, when he had fallen headlong from some treacherous perch, to see her slender feet, in crescent sandals, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well shaped, light-footed, had just taken up her knitting, and was seated with her niece, Dinah Morris. Another motherless niece, Hetty Sorrel, a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... had been equivalent, as she saw them, to a permission, even to an invitation. He had turned away unnoticing, a queer, absent tenderness in his eyes, as they followed Gerda ... Gerda ... walking light-footed up the wet causeway.... Well, if he had got out of the habit of wanting to make love to her, she would not offer him chances again. When he got the habit back, he must make his own ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... blood. Carelessly they stride across the snowed-over crevices, and when the terrible storms, at which men are so alarmed, hurl down rocks and avalanches from the summits, the Chamois do not fear them. They find their way safely through the thickest mist and darkest clouds. Agile and light-footed, gentle and peaceable, proud and courageous, they lead a happy life among the mountains, as long as man ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... understood, almost unconsciously, a good deal of what Hermione was feeling as she watched, and he put his whole soul into the effort to shine, to dazzle, to rouse gayety and wonder in the padrone, who saw him dance for the first time. He was untiring in his variety and his invention. Sometimes, light-footed in his mountain boots, with an almost incredible swiftness and vim, he rushed from end to end of the terrace. His feet twinkled in steps so complicated and various that he made the eyes that watched him wink as at a play of sparks in a furnace, and his arms and hands were never still, yet ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... like a shadow where the phantom had stood and opened the unused door. I was about to pass into the deeper gloom of the house when a hound appeared and stood regarding me with shining eyes in the faint gloaming. He was presently joined by one as light-footed, but milk-white and slimmer, and both turned their heads as if in question of their master, who ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... stockings. He had never considered Allen's interest in Marian serious; for Allen had to Dan's knowledge paid similar attentions to half a dozen other girls. Allen's imagination made a goddess of every pretty girl, and Dan had settled down to the belief that his friend saw in Marian only one of the many light-footed Dianas visible in the city thoroughfares, whom he invested with deific charms and apostrophized in glowing phrases. But that he should marry Marian—Marian, the joyous and headstrong; Marian the romping, careless Thalia of Allen's bright galaxy! She was ill-fitted ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... statements of a simple character, exasperate the modern reader, who demands to have his facts presented clearly and coherently, and above all, requires what he feels to be solid ground under his feet. He declines absolutely to follow the light-footed mystic over what seem to him to be quaking morasses, in a wild chase after dancing will-o'-the-wisps, which appear and disappear with bewildering and irrational caprice. Yet the men who wrote these exasperating treatises ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... "how can that be? I met that spirit but now upon the road. Gipsying along he was, light-foot, light-clad, and over his shoulder ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards |
