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Vitality   /vaɪtˈæləti/   Listen
Vitality

noun
1.
An energetic style.  Synonym: verve.
2.
A healthy capacity for vigorous activity.  Synonyms: energy, vim.  "He seemed full of vim and vigor"
3.
(biology) a hypothetical force (not physical or chemical) once thought by Henri Bergson to cause the evolution and development of organisms.  Synonyms: elan vital, life force, vital force.
4.
The property of being able to survive and grow.  Synonym: animation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Vitality" Quotes from Famous Books



... against the pump with a drunken chuckle: "Dave Cabarreux thinks that he's dead, hey? Boyer's not the sort of man to die as long as a good thing like this is in the dice. Why, Boyer's young, sir. He's got more brains and experience and vitality than all the damned wooden Cabarreuxes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... willingly draw the veil, but at the present moment I firmly believe that the planters of Behar—and I speak as an observant student of what has been going on in India—have done more to elevate the peasantry, to rouse them into vitality, and to improve them in every way, than all the other agencies that have been at work with the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... his staff was sent to England in charge of it. In this document he informs the Secretary of State that Cetywayo's rule was resolutely built up "without any of the ordinary and lawful foundations of authority, and by the mere vigour and vitality of an individual character." It is difficult to understand what Sir Garnet means in this passage. If the fact of being the rightful and generally accepted occupant of the throne is not an "ordinary and ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... important to study in the Church of the Latter-Day Saints is the evolution of a communism which has more than half a century of activity to its credit, and which, in contrast to so many other fruitless attempts, has given marked proofs of a vitality that shows ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... the cold," said Milly drowsily. The fur coat and blazing logs were beginning to do their blessed work. "Your vitality ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... continually deplored the ignorance and poverty of Russia and its backwardness compared with Europe only heightened Pierre's pleasure. Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an extraordinary strength and vitality—the strength which in that vast space amid the snows maintained the life of this original, peculiar, and unique people. He did not contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree with him—an apparent agreement ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... the individual. Joy is a great tonic, and acts on the vocal cords and mucous membrane as does an astringent; a brilliant and clear quality of voice is the result. Grief or Fear, on the other hand, being depressing emotions, lower the vitality, and the debilitating influence communicates to the voice a dull ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... journal, in its dates reminding me of stormy events in my own existence, and grand doings in the world's. And those dates there, chronicling but the mysterious, unrevealed record of some obscure, loving heart! And in that chronicle, O Sir Poet, there was as much genius, vigour of thought, vitality of being, poured and wasted, as ever kind friend will say was lavished on the rude outer world by big John Burley! Genius, genius! are we all alike, then, save when we leash ourselves to some matter-of-fact material, and float over the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom; there was no red weed to be seen, and as I prowled, hesitating, on the verge of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and vitality. I came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the trees. I stopped to look at them, drawing a lesson from their stout resolve to live. And presently, turning suddenly, with an odd feeling of being watched, ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... easily intelligible that we should have a parallel interest which we call art closely akin and lending powerful support to the other two. It is intelligible too that moral goodness, intellectual power, high vitality, and strength should be approved by the intuition." This reduces, or rather brings the problem back to a tangible basis namely:—the translation of an artistic intuition into musical sounds approving and reflecting, or endeavoring to approve and reflect, a "moral ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... immediately entered my brain. These effte monarchies, these governments of the past, on which "the rust of ages," as VICTOR HUGO remarks, "lies like a bloody snow of bygone vassalage," have yet sufficient vitality to teach a lesson to the young and vigorous governments of the West. At any rate this old duke taught me a lesson, and I did my best to hurry off and say it. It was evident that if I wanted to be Whiskey Inspector ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various

... Hindoo does muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. His religion forbids him to take life, and he obeys, but he steers as near to that sin as he can, without actually committing it, and vitality is seen here at a lower ebb, perhaps, than in any other country under the sun. The grassman maintains just so much flesh on the bones of his beast as will suffice to hold them together under their burden, and this can be done without lucerne grass, so poor Tantalus toddles about, buried under a ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... rendezvous, but what cared we? We dwelt in the bosom of nature, and three miles was but a pastime. We only wanted an excuse of the most feeble kind to start on a tramp, day or night. All along the way we breathed health and vitality; the air was full of singing birds, and our hearts were crying out, "What is so rare as a day in June?" In fact, our June days lasted longer than they did elsewhere—they ran into September, October and November. It is the harmony of our hearts ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... grow quite "gentlemanly" or Salonfaehig in the conventional and obliterated sense of the terms. He was too cordial and emphatic for that. His broad brow, his big chest, his bright blue eyes, his volubility in talk and laughter told a tale of vitality far beyond the common; but his fine and nervous hands, and the vivacity of all his reactions suggested a degree of sensibility that one rarely finds conjoined with so robustly animal a frame. The great peculiarity of Davidson did indeed ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... confusion, as he endeavours to pry into the dark enigma of the world; but all that is painful in it will soon vanish, if he will only view it in connexion with God's infinite plans for the good of the universe. He will then see, that this world, with all its wickedness and woe, is but a dim speck of vitality in a boundless dominion of light, that is necessary to the glory and perfection of ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... stability; immutability &c adj.; unchangeability, &c adj.; unchangeableness^; constancy; stable equilibrium, immobility, soundness, vitality, stabiliment^, stiffness, ankylosis^, solidity, aplomb. establishment, fixture; rock, pillar, tower, foundation, leopard's spots, Ethiopia's skin. permanence &c 141; obstinacy &c 606. V. be firm &c adj.; stick fast; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... my fellow-citizens a long time or a short time, and drink, as it were, out of the common fountains with them and go back feeling that you have so generously given me the sense of your support and of the living vitality in your hearts, of its great ideals which made America the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... held fifteen times a year. Charles V. was the last chief of this assembly, which had previously been removed to Ghent. In 1577 it greeted the arrival of the Prince of Orange, but this was its last sign of vitality. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... discipline which, by consent of public opinion, have tightened until they are as strict as in Napoleon's day. Gregariousness was supreme on this day of victory; democracy triumphant. Democracy had proved itself again as had English freedom against Prussian system. Vitality is another French possession and this means industry. The German also is industrious, but more from discipline and training than from a philosophy of life. French vitality is inborn, electrically installed ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... near Aleppo was thus no longer required. Now followed a period even more difficult to put up with than actual war itself. A trek of over 400 miles in a space of two months, following that nightmare of a sojourn in the Jordan Valley, had reduced the vitality of both man and horse to a very low ebb, and consequently the sick roll in both cases was large. Malignant malaria contracted in the valley took toll of many brave lives, and an outbreak of anthrax, coupled with debility, caused havoc among ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown

... sent a wave of alarm pulsing through each nerve. Though his manner betokened that the affair was something which concerned Elsie alone, she was on fire until she learnt that his "secret" alluded to the restored vitality ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... henceforth this is what love will be in him, and it will be fully maintained, though it knows no actual object. It will manifest itself in suppressed force, seeking for exit in a thousand directions; sometimes grotesque perhaps, but always force. It will give energy to expression, vitality to his admiration of the beautiful, devotion to his worship, enthusiasm to his zeal for freedom. More than this, it will NOT make his private life unbearable by contrast; rather the reverse. The vision of Medora will not intensify the shadow over Rosoman Street, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... although the damage which such an error carries with it, must become evident in their lives, on closer observation. Besides, we must not overlook the fact, that what in a perverse system is still relatively true, and the thing which gives it a relative vitality, is borrowed from truth and from the correct system; and that all those who oppose the present fundamentals of morality, and especially of Christian morality, in a thousand ways live upon and consume the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... reflections. In spite of this cheering glow of sunshine, the rooms still had the same dead and uninhabited appearance, and the presence of my friend, a vigorous and practical man, seemed to bring no recognizable vitality or human element to counteract the oppressiveness of the place. Every detail of my waking dream or hallucination of the night before was perfectly fresh in my mind, and the sense of apprehension ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... of light from the sinking sun was gone. Waring's hands came away from the opened shirt shudderingly. He wiped his hands on the sand, and, rising, ran back to Dex. He returned with a whiskey flask. Pat was of tough fiber and tremendous vitality. If the spark were still unquenched, if it could be called back even for a breath, that which Waring knew, yet wanted to confirm beyond all doubt, might be given in a word. He raised Pat's head, and barely tilted ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... fresh accession of sperm-cells was possible, and hence it would seem as if in some birds the female organs were able to store up living sperm-cells, which only work to fertilize and develop ova in the event of some accident rendering it necessary, and which otherwise ultimately lose vitality ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... such a process. Kubalski, the great Russian physicist, produced crystalline forms exhibiting every faculty that we call vital by subjecting certain combinations of chemicals to the action of highly concentrated rays of various colours. Something in light and nothing else produced their pseudo-vitality. We do not begin to know how to harness the potentialities of that magnetic vibration of the ether ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... New York is the grave-yard of old Trinity Church. A handsome iron railing separates it from Broadway, and the thick rows of grave-stones, all crumbling and stained with age, present a strange contrast to the bustle, vitality, and splendor with which they are surrounded. They stare solemnly down into Wall Street, and offer a bitter commentary upon the struggles and anxiety of the money kings of the great city. Work, toil, plan, combine ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... have no doubt that I had experienced the ebb of some vitality, for it is the saddest thing about us that this bright spirit with which we are lit from within like lanterns, can suffer dimness. Such frailty makes one fear that extinction is our final destiny, and it saps us with numbness, and we are less than ourselves. Seven nights had I been on ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... sense of power came from within, not without. He was master of himself and of others. He looked the lion and he was one. The lines of his face were handsome in the big sense, strong, regular, masculine. He drew young men as a magnet. His vitality inspired them. His stature was small in height, measured by inches, but of such dignity, power and magnetism that ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... it is from four to five feet in height. The flowers are cruciform, generally yellow, but sometimes white or yellowish-white. The seeds, which ripen in July and August of the second year, are round, reddish-brown or blackish-brown, and retain their vitality five years. About ten thousand ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... familiar knowledge of ancient manners which he thought enabled him to give his tales the necessary touch of novelty, and from the "hurried frankness," or spontaneity of style which endowed them with vitality, Scott believed that his talents included a special knack at description. He felt, however, that a sense of the picturesque in action was a different thing from a similar perception in regard to scenery, and that though the first was natural to him, he was ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... well—this highest art Which should have fed the mind, which to the strong Adds strength and ever new vitality,— It is destroying me, it hunts me forth, Where'er I rove, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... was in his youth the drama was the popular means of amusement. It was "ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, Punch, and library, at the same time. The best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers which suddenly broke into this field." Shakespeare found a great mass of old plays existing in manuscript and reproduced from time to time on the stage. He borrowed in all directions: ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... "He has vitality enough for his needs," said he, nodding to the palmer. "These groans betoken a good degree of pain; though the young fellow is evidently a self-contained sort of nature, and does not let us know all he feels. It promises well, however; keep him in bed and quiet, and within ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the birth of her little daughter his wife was not strong, and was so long in regaining vitality that in the child's second year she was ordered abroad by the physician. At this time Baird's engagements were such that he could not accompany her, and accordingly he remained in America. The career was just opening up its charmed vistas to him; his literary efforts ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... quantity, color and curliness is an index of genital energy. A poor pilous system, on the other hand, Roubaud regarded as a probable though not an irrefragable proof of sexual frigidity in women. "In the cold woman the pilous system is remarkable for the languor of its vitality; the hairs are fair, delicate, scarce and smooth, while in ardent natures there are little curly tufts about the temples." (Traite de l'Impuissance, pp. 124, 523.) Martineau declared (Lecons sur les Deformations Vulvaires, p. 40) that "the more developed ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... adopted child. He had taken it in a feeble and helpless infancy. He had given it strength and increased vitality. He brought it up to a vigorous and useful maturity. It was loved by only a handful of students when he gave his name and talents to aid its life: but when he died, a hundred and fifty pupils were its warm suitors, and hundreds of lawyers over the whole union cherished ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... mammalian life of Africa and, in a less degree, of tropical Asia; indeed, it does not even approach the similar mammalian life of North America and northern Eurasia, poor though this is compared with the seething vitality of tropical life in the Old World. During a geologically recent period, a period extending into that which saw man spread over the world in substantially the physical and cultural stage of many existing ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... Some children show higher capacity than the average along nearly every line that can be measured or tested, without showing a preponderance in any one direction. Such children are said to be of high grade, or of high "vitality." In the same way many children are below the average in nearly every line, without being particularly defective along any one line. They can do one thing about as well as another, just as the high-grade boys and girls can do one ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... semi-tropical sun was waking strange ferments in the placid Friesland blood, and producing a race who added the turbulence and restlessness of the south to the formidable tenacity of the north. Strong vitality and violent ambitions produced feuds and rivalries worthy of medieval Italy, and the story of the factious little communities is like a chapter out of Guicciardini. Disorganisation ensued. The burghers would not pay taxes and the treasury was empty. One ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... wine and we seated ourselves to drink. It was of a famous vintage, that of 1818, a year when war and wine throve together, and its pure, but powerful juice seemed to impart renewed vitality to the system. By the time we had half finished the second bottle, Simon's head, which I knew was a weak one, had begun to yield, while I remained calm as ever, only that every draught seemed to send a flush of vigor through my limbs. Simon's utterance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... outer things drop away,[24] and he seems to become lost, and absorbed into the being of the universe. He partakes, momentarily, of a larger, fuller life, he drinks in vitality through nature. The least blade of grass, he says, or the greatest oak, "seemed like exterior nerves and veins for the conveyance of feeling to me. Sometimes a very ecstasy of exquisite enjoyment of the entire visible universe ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... no longer realised that she was ill, but appeared to have regained her strength miraculously in the reawakening of all the passion and pride of her nature. To have thought her dream ended, and all at once to have re-found it in its full beauty and vitality, delighted her. To be able to say that they had done nothing unworthy of their love, but that it was other persons who had been the guilty ones, was a comfort. This growth of herself, this at last certain triumph, exalted her and threw her into ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... of itself, a major objective for the officer corps, since our public has little studious interest in military affairs, tends ever to discount the vitality of the military role in the progress and prosperity of the nation and regards the security problem as one of the less pleasant and abnormal burdens on ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... everywhere, the country seemed poor in products, and looked as if it were involved in a constant struggle between droughts and floods. They would have judged it to be poor in capability also, if, on further experience, a vitality had not appeared which seemed to electrify the soil on the touch of colonisation. Imported animals, trees, and plants lived and flourished among the dingy forests, which barely yielded food enough ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... sales—one being hand-embroidered Swiss waists from two-ninety-eight upward—I felt as if a stampede of longhorns had caught me. Darned near bedfast I was! Say, talk about the pale, weak, nervous city woman with exhausted vitality! See 'em in action first, say I. There was a corn-fed hussy in a plush bonnet with forget-me-nots, two hundred and thirty or forty on the hoof, that exhausted my vitality all right—no holds barred, an arm like first-growth hick'ry across my windpipe, and me up against ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... on to reflect over the strange and obstinate tradition that lingers still with such vitality among the human race, that certain places are haunted by the spirits of the dead. It is hard to believe that such tradition, so widespread, so universal, should have no kind of justification in fact. And yet there appears to be no justification for the ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... law in their usual confident way, tell us that the vitality of the human body is at its lowest at two o'clock in the morning: and that it is then, as a consequence, that the mind is least able to contemplate the present with equanimity, the future with fortitude, and the past without regret. Every thinking man, ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... winding from tonal to tonal climax, and out of the slow movement which is like a tourniquet twisting the heart into the spirited allegro molto vivace, it was as if beneath Leon Kantor's fingers the strings were living vein-cords, youth, vitality, and the very foam of exuberance ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... magnificent sight. Whether or not there was much fine stock among them or even any, the fact remained that hundreds of wild horses together in one drove, captive and knowing it, were collected in this great trap. The intense vitality of them, the vivid coloring, the beautiful action of many and the statuesque immobility of the majority, were thrilling and all satisfying to ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... power of commercial bonds and the majesty of the sword, until in its very vastness it collapsed. The heart of its people did not beat in unison. Nations may be made by the joining of hands, but the measure of their real strength and vitality, like that of the human body, is in the heart. Show me the country whose people are not at heart in sympathy with its institutions, and the fervor of whose patriotism is not bespoken in its flag, and I will show you a ship of state ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... depressing to not a few of the thousands come to Burcliff to enjoy a holiday which, whether of days or of weeks, had looked short to the labor weary when first they came, and was growing shorter and shorter, while the days that composed it grew longer and longer by the frightful vitality of dreariness. Especially to those of them who hated work, a day like this, wrapping them in a blanket of fog, whence the water was every now and then squeezed down upon them in the wettest of all rains, seemed a huge bite snatched by that vague enemy ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... advanced with threatening hand, and from force of habit he retreated before her, and sank into the nearest chair; so that, when his mates entered, they found him sitting with bent head and down-hanging hands, as limp and inert as if his vitality had been sapped by the news he ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... more than brilliant oratory that had drawn to the Senate chamber the distinguished audiences faced by Webster and Hayne in the great debate of 1830. The issues discussed touched the vitality and permanence of the nation itself. Nullification was no mere abstraction of the senator from South Carolina. It was a principle which his State—and, for aught one could tell, his section—was about to put into action. Already, in 1830, the air was tense ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... inaccessible peaks and precipices of the surrounding mountains. Now, as I scrutinized them with greater intentness, my mind began to reach out to fresh conclusions. There was something about them, an indescribable sort of silent vitality that suggested, to my broadening consciousness, a state of life-in-death—a something that was by no means life, as we understand it; but rather an inhuman form of existence, that well might be likened to a deathless trance—a condition in which it was possible to imagine their continuing, eternally. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... common-looking, plain, almost grotesque in appearance though she was, possessed that rare human attribute, vitality. ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... common expletive, a word meaning hell. This is also where Piper introduced and explained the Atomic Era dating system (A.E.). Uller Uprising is set in the early years of the Terran Federation's expansion and exploration, an epoch of great vitality. In "The Edge of the Knife" Piper compares this time of discovery to the Spanish conquest of the Americas. This feeling of vigor and unlimited possibilities runs through all the early Federation ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... might have named, and which would have manifested the same incontestable supremacy: there is the energy of meekness, that spirit of docility which communes with the Almighty in hallowed and receptive awe: there is the boundless vitality of love which lives on through midnight after midnight, unfainting and unspent: there is the inexhaustible energy of faith which hold on and out amid the massed hostilities of all its foes. You cannot defeat ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... by no means commonplace. To me, I own, there was some excitement in talking quietly across a dinner-table with a man whose venomous pen-stabs had sapped the vitality of at least one monarchy. That much was a matter of public knowledge. But I knew more. I knew of him—from my friend—as a certainty what the guardians of social order in Europe had at most only ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... of the mighty Jupiter. Once, doubtless, this fine planet illuminated the troop of worlds that derived their treasure of vitality from him with his intrinsic light: to-day, however, these moons in their turn shed upon the extinct central globe the pale soft light which they receive from our solar focus, illuminating the brief Jovian nights (which last less than five hours, on ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... Mary's phrase concerning her cousin "that no man enjoyed life more than he did." To quote again from Mr Gosse: "A good deal in this book may offend the fine, and not merely the superfine. But the vitality and elastic vigour of the whole carry us over every difficulty... and we pause at the close of the novel to reflect on the amazing freshness of the talent which could thus make a set of West country scenes, in that despised thing, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... on the brow and laughter in the eyes, humour and eloquence all along the large and somewhat loose mouth, with plenty of go in the powerful but not anxiously determined chin. These were the moral qualities of the face, which Isabel Strange did not miss; but it was the fascination of its general vitality that struck her most, as an important introduction was made, to the usual fantastic ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... one person in the village who had actually known Luella Miller. That person was a woman well over eighty, but a marvel of vitality and unextinct youth. Straight as an arrow, with the spring of one recently let loose from the bow of life, she moved about the streets, and she always went to church, rain or shine. She had never married, and had lived alone ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... larger boy to perform for him. A few days later, it was announced by the herald that my friend would give a Bear Dance, at which he was to be publicly proclaimed a medicine man. It would be the great event of his short existence, for the disease had already exhausted his strength and vitality. Of course, we all understood that there would be an active youth to exhibit the ferocious nature of the beast after which ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... are great differences. I have seen that. In materialization some seem badly put together, and these resemble our former terrestrial bodies. They grow old, they succumb to disease, they feel changes of weather and they have less vitality. Yes,' and he drew nearer, 'it is these unhappy misbirths in this spirit land who retain the sin of earth and cannot survive and get the Kinkotantitomi or irreverently, as the earthling would say, the grand bounce. They are fired off ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... clothing, rest and recreation, and her effort to maintain her strength and energy. In this way the League's inquiry on income and outlay was so arranged as to ascertain, not only the worker's gain and expense in money, but, as far as possible, her gain and expense in health and vitality. The inquiry was conducted for a year and a half by Mrs. Sue ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... with the fatalism of conquered and resigned leviathans. Immaculately clean, inconceivably tidy, shimmering with brilliant light under its lofty and beautiful ceiling, shaking and roaring with the terrific thunder of its own vitality, this hall in which no common voice could make itself heard produced nevertheless an effect of magical stillness, silence, and solitude. We were alone in it, save that now and then in the far-distant spaces a figure might flit and disappear between the huge ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... in a flurry of joy over this windfall, but a little later, when I was left to myself, I became aware that the flurry I was in was of quite a different nature. When I tried to think of America I found that my ambition in that direction had lost its former vitality ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... black, glowing, of great size, almost filling the iris and the whole melting into intensity that verged into red. Either the man had been long without sleep or he was one of unusual intelligence and vitality. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... the quantity of inferior fruit, lessens the number of culls and the labor at packing time, conserves the energy of the tree by preventing the maturity of great numbers of seeds, diminishes diseases and pests. The overloading of the tree not only imposes a heavy tax on its vitality but is likely to break the limbs and to ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... with Nature was not, as in Margrave, from the joyous sense of Nature's lavish vitality; it was refined into exquisite perception of the diviner spirit by which that vitality is informed. Thus, like the artist, from outward forms of beauty she drew forth the covert types, lending to things the most familiar exquisite meanings unconceived before. ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Charles Stuart's recovery was perfectly magical in its rapidity. Youth and splendid vitality, no doubt, had something to do with it, but I think the fact that she was Mrs. Charles Stuart had more ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... possessed of remarkable vitality and an iron will, and she showed great powers of execution and administration, never shirking the gravest responsibilities. A part of her life was spent in the rough camps of her devoted feudal ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... it be dumb, by the movement of its limbs. The external shock is a stimulus; the answer of the organism is the response. If we can find out the relation between this stimulus and the response, we shall be able to determine the vitality of the plant at that moment. In an excitable condition, the feeblest stimulus will evoke an extraordinarily large response: in a depressed state, even a strong stimulus evokes only a feeble response; and lastly, when death has overcome ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... Lohengrin never failed to touch his sense of awe. "What's in a name?" for him, was a significant question—a question of life or death. For to mispronounce a name was a bad blunder, but to name it wrongly was to miss it altogether. Such a thing had no real life, or at best a vitality that would soon fade. Adam knew that! And he pondered much in his childhood over the difficulty Adam must have had "discovering" the correct appellations for some of ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... the last two thousand years. But already her fertility is beginning to die out; her productive powers are diminishing every day. Those new diseases that annually attack the products of the soil, those defective crops, those insufficient resources, are all signs of a vitality that is rapidly wearing out and of an approaching exhaustion. Thus, we already see the millions rushing to the luxuriant bosom of America, as a source of help, not inexhaustible indeed, but not yet exhausted. In its turn, that ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... darned; an old black frock with full "bishop sleeves," a good deal mended and dreadfully wrinkled, was given to one of the neighbors, expert in such matters, to be ironed; and the propriety of making use of various other ancient duds was eagerly and earnestly discussed. Aunt Patsy, whose vitality had been wonderfully aroused, now that there was some opportunity for making use of it, spent nearly two hours turning over, examining, and reflecting upon a pair of old-fashioned corsets, which, although they had been long ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... scarlet, the nose neither Grecian nor aquiline, but slightly retrousse; a bronze moustache with long curling ends that were undeniably red, and hair a little darker, slightly curling as well. A broad-shouldered man with the deep breathing of intense vitality; healthy nerves that could enjoy laziness to the full, as well as a brisk walk across ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... itself, catches the sum total of little flexings of the muscles, movements of the skin, winkings, even the play of wind and light in the hair of the coat, all of which, while impossible of analysis, together relieve the appearance of dead inertia. The vitality of a creature like the crocodile, however, seems to have withdrawn into the inner recesses of its being. It lies like a log of wood, and for a log of ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... there would come again the old days of adversity, and her instincts were in one sense correct. She lived on to the advanced age of eighty-six, and died twenty-one years after the break-up of her son's empire—a striking proof of the vitality and tenacity of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... abounding vitality were astounding. He would have been an eminent man in his day had he never invented the telegraph; but it is of absorbing interest, in following his career, to note how he was forced to give up one ambition after another, to suffer blow after blow which would have overwhelmed ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... more beautiful than Lady Rosamond. Her features were formed as regularly as a model of an Angelo; her expression might be a life-long study for a DaVinci, a Rubens, or a Reynolds. Yet such beauty had not power to fan anew the smouldering fire which consumed the vitality of Lieutenant Trevelyan's existence. On the other hand this lovely girl saw not in her companion anything that could create any feeling akin to love. Such was the entire confidence thus reposed that they were amused at ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... 6 here is a thermometer which indicates a degree of vitality; it does not express the degree of vitality; that is reserved for gesture. We need not ask what degree this can give; its office is to express—and this is a good deal—a value mechanical and material, but very significant. A reversion of values may constitute a falsehood. Stage actors ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... between our need to accommodate the enhanced flow of "low risk, high volume" people and goods essential to our economic vitality, while at the same time focusing energy and resources on the criminal, hostile and fraudulent few. It places a premium on effective domain awareness activities, such as accurate identification of containerized goods before they depart ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States

... Gulf," a somewhat imaginary thesis is developed, based on the terrible vitality which certain vile instincts keep even in the purest and most innocent minds, while the story "He Was..." shows us the inside of a clinic, in which there are two dying men whose illusions of life persist till ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... August, 1851, Mr. Toombs spoke in Elberton. He was in the full tide of his manhood, an orator without equal; a statesman without fear or reproach. Personally, he was a splendid picture, full of health and vitality. He had been prosperous in his affairs. He was prominent in public life and overbore all opposition. His powers were in their prime. In his speech to his constituents he mentioned the fact that his opponents had criticised the manner in ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... radiant with glowing health and vitality. He was a friendly, rejoicing creature and as full of the joy of life as a scampering moor pony. He was clever enough but not too clever and he was friends with the world. Braemarnie was picturesquely ancient and beautiful. It would be a home of ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... courage. There is in them, perhaps, more real gayety, more spontaneous fun, than in his later books. Voltaire was between thirty-five and forty years old when they were written, and although he possessed to the end of his long life more vitality than most men, yet he was physically something of an invalid, and his many exiles and disappointments told upon his temper. From 1734, when these letters first appeared in France, to 1778, when he died, worn out with years, labors, quarrels, and honors, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... captured and taken on board the schooner, and thence to shore but many were drowned in the transit, and when driven to San Francisco the dead were scattered all along the route. Although wild they seemed to lack the vitality that tame goats possess. The speculation proved a disappointment ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free Down to its roots, and in that freedom bold. And so the grandeur of the forest tree Comes, not from casting in a formal mould, But from its own divine vitality. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... the other side. The mediaeval Church derived stores of strength from its sympathetic attitude towards women and children and the illiterate; and there was a sensible loss of vitality and interest when the ministry of the Church was curtailed to suit the common sense of a handful of statesmen, scholars, and philosophers. At the time the festival was abolished, opinion was divided ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... the consanguineous marriages from Bemiss may easily be accounted for by the fact that the cases were highly selected so that nearly one-third of the children were in some way defective, and the parents in many cases were far below the average in vitality. The "more distantly related" are in a still lesser degree representative of the class, since out of a greater possibility of choice a smaller number were chosen. The "non-consanguineous" were supposed to be near the average in ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner

... there, laughing scornfully and feverishly at the cinchona trees and the coal-tar derivatives. Pernicious fever is a case for a simple mathematician instead of a doctor. It is merely this formula: Vitality the desire to live - the duration of the fever ...
— Options • O. Henry

... the impression he made upon any one was of something bright and birdlike. I think he wanted to be birdlike, he possessed the possibility of an avian charm, but, as a matter of fact, there was nothing of the glowing vitality of the bird in his being. And a bird is never out of breath and with an open mouth. He was in the clerical dress of that time, that costume that seems now almost the strangest of all our old-world clothing, and he ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... he entered the Sophomore class of Oglethorpe College, near Milledgeville, an institution that did not have sufficient vitality to survive the Civil War. He did not think very highly of the course of instruction, and found his chief delight, as perhaps the best part of his culture, in the congenial circle of friends he gathered around him. The evenings he spent ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... blue sea. It was a cloudless day overhead, and the air seemed kindling and fresh round him as it blew across the stretches of heather from the western sea. He himself felt full of an extraordinary vitality, and the mere movement of his limbs gave him joy as he went swiftly and easily forward over the heather. There was the sound of the wind in his ears, and again and again there came the gush of ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... wonderful old thing never had and never could have a conscious life of its own. So strangely does the passion—which I had not invented, reader, whoever thou art that thinkest love and a church do not well harmonize—so strangely, I say, full to overflowing of its own vitality, does it radiate life, that it would even of its own superabundance quicken into blessed consciousness the inanimate objects around it, thinking what they would feel had they a consciousness correspondent to their form, were their faculties moved from within themselves ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... two hours when he sank back in his chair, breathless, and with his face as red as a cherry. And just at this same time also Salvator had so far worked out his sketch that the figures began to wear a look of vitality, and the whole, viewed at a little distance, had the appearance of ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... upon myself more than I have a right to do in saying now that Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century; but if that be so, its life has been so far prolonged by the vitality of some of its younger brothers. Barchester Towers would hardly be so well known as it is had there been no Framley Parsonage and no ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... of it, the damage done was seriously augmented by a conscious giving way to it, induced, I thought, by hope of the relief it sometimes afforded the stomach to get rid of the nauseous drug at a moment of reduced digestive vitality. Then it became my fear that in these violent and prolonged retchings internal injury might be sustained, and so I begged him to try to restrain the tendency to cough so much and often. He took the remonstrance with great goodnature (observing ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... efficiency. The civil service is still very far from being in a satisfactory condition either in the central, state, or municipal offices. Moreover, the passage of reform laws has not had any appreciable effect upon the vitality or the power of the professional politician. The machine has, on the whole, increased rather than diminished in power, during the past twenty-five years. Civil service reform is no longer as vigorously opposed as it used to be, because it is no longer feared. The politicians ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... be over-used to such an extent as to result in a slovenly, vulgar, and altogether objectionable style of singing; and that whereas the vibrato may imbue with virility and warmth an otherwise cold, dead tone and if skilfully and judiciously used may add greatly to the color and vitality of the singing, the tremolo is on the other hand a destroyer of pitch accuracy, a despoiler of vocal idealism, and an abhorrence to the listener; if our conductor knows these and other similar facts about singing, then he will not run quite so great a risk ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... art impulse itself, in this country of conflagrations, has a vitality which survives each generation of artists, and defies the flame that changes their labour to ashes or melts it to shapelessness. The idea whose symbol has perished will reappear again in other creations— perhaps after the passing of a century—modified, indeed, yet recognisably of kin ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... under the trees. In China it has been customary from time immemorial to plant trees on graves in order thereby to strengthen the soul of the deceased and thus to save his body from corruption; and as the evergreen cypress and pine are deemed to be fuller of vitality than other trees, they have been chosen by preference for this purpose. Hence the trees that grow on graves are sometimes identified with the souls of the departed. Among the Miao-Kia, an aboriginal ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... arbitrary: the arbitrary is but the slavish puffed up—and is gone with the hour. The life of the people is below; it ferments, and the scum is for ever being skimmed off, and cast—God knows where. All is scum where will is not. They leave behind them influences indeed, but few that keep their vitality in shapes of art or literature. There they go—little sparrows of the human world, chattering eagerly, darting on every crumb and seed of supposed advantage! while from behind the great dustman's cart, the huge tiger-cat of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... solemn lines of geese, were spread with brown nets. On May mornings, if the take was good, long lines of carts rattled down the road carrying the fish to the railway at Clifden, and the place bore for a while the appearance of vitality. A vagrant Englishman discovered that lobsters could be had almost for the asking in Carrowkeel. The commercial instincts of his race were aroused ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... a guide-book to joy. It is for the use of the sad, the bored, the tired, anxious, disheartened and disappointed. It is for the use of all those whose cup of vitality is not brimming over. ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... morality, is founded in the precept, know thyself. Poetry, like happiness, is in the human heart. Its inspiration is of that which is in man, and it will never fail because there are changes in costume and grouping. What is the vitality of the Iliad? Character; nothing else. All the rest is only read out of antiquarianism or of affectation. Why is Shakespeare the greatest of poets? Because he was one of the greatest of philosophers. We reason on the conduct of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... funny with what an air of humorous resignation Townsend Ripley stepped into the skiff and the mock air of ebbing vitality which the others showed was as ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... fair to see and winning in his ways. There was at the first contact both bloom and charm; and most of all there was life. To use the word his friends describe him by, he was "vivid". This vitality, though manifold in expression, is felt primarily in his sensations — surprise ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke

... vitality were refreshing to one who was himself almost always weak and suffering. He would watch her at play with the dogs in the garden, or up and down the staircase, and delight in the grace and vigour of her movements. She would come in from her walks and rides with a glow upon her face and a light ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... different compartments, but one of whom occasionally moved—slowly. He understood that. For weeks now the Peary had lain captive, and her air had passed beyond the aid of rectifiers. Tortured, those survivors inside were, constantly struggling for life, with vitality ever sinking lower. Some might already be dead. But at least he could try to save ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter

... March, he received word of the death of his mother. He was not surprised, and, though he loved her very much, was not overly grieved by it. She had led a useful, unselfish, happy life; she was old and for several years had been losing her vitality without apparent pain. Her life had been a peaceful one; she expected the peace of the righteous after death; she believed those of her family she left behind would be happy. John looked upon her going as ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... perfectly-shaped, and with that indescribable charm of feature which neither the pen nor the camera can do justice to—Norah Castellan was facing him, her eyes gleaming and almost black with anger, and her whole body instinct with intense vitality. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... of 'Equality' was a task too great for the physical strength and vitality of its author. His health, never robust, gave way completely, and the book was finished by an indomitable and inflexible dominion of the powerful mind over the failing body which was nothing short of heroic. Consumption, that common New England inheritance, developed ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... genius for government which built up the empire. But prosperity led to luxury, self-exaggeration, and enervating vices. Society was steeped in sensuality, frivolity, and selfishness. The empire was rotten to the core, and must become the prey of barbarians, who had courage and vitality. Three centuries earlier, the empire might have withstood the shock of external enemies, and the barbarians might have been annihilated. But they invaded the provinces when central power was weak, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... factor, a something in which to live and move and have its being, an Environment. Without this it cannot live or move or have any being. Without Environment the soul is as the carbon without the oxygen, as the fish without the water, as the animal frame without the extrinsic conditions of vitality. Natural ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond

... the creed, if not the people, from off the face of the globe. If repressive measures are of any avail, circumcision as an Hebraic rite should now have no existence. Its present existence and observance show a vitality that is simply phenomenal; its resistance and apparent indestructibility would seem to stamp it as of divine origin. No custom, habit, or rite has survived so many ages and so many persecutions; other customs ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... the microscope, the nerve cell is seen to contain, besides the "nucleus" which is present in every living cell and is essential for maintaining its vitality and special characteristics, certain peculiar granules which appear to be stores of fuel to be consumed in the activity of the cell, and numerous very fine fibrils coursing through the cell and out into the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... the starry stratum to which our solar system belongs, it contemplates this terrestrial spheroid, surrounded by air and water, and finally, proceeds to the consideration of the form of our planet, its temperature and magnetic tension, and the fullness of organic vitality which is unfolded on its surface under the action of light. Partial insight into the relative dependence existing among all phenomena. Amid all the mobile and unstable elements in space, 'mean numerical ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... illustrations of her direct watchful vitality that she does show. As, for instance, when the Christian Endeavorers fought the question of prize-fight moving-picture shows and won out or when a Parkhurst fought bravely for a clean police force. Even if the world today ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... know," said the Tracer gravely, "what balm there may be in a suspension of sensation, perhaps of vitality, to protect the human body from corruption after death. I do not know how soon suspended animation or the state of hypnotic coma, undisturbed, changes into death—whether it comes gradually, imperceptibly freeing the soul; whether the soul ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... was killing him ceased its ravages, or rather was slain in its turn by the increased vitality against which it had to strive. He left the hospital and took up his quarters at the Palace Hotel, and then, like the General of an army, he began to formulate his plan ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... quality; and I should say that Pierre and His People and A Romany of the Snows have an atmosphere in which the beings who make the stories live seem natural to their environment. It is this quality which gives vitality to the characters themselves. Had I not been able to create atmosphere which would have given naturalness to Pierre and his friends, some of the characters, and many of the incidents, would have seemed monstrosities —melodramatic episodes merely. The truth is, that while the episode, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the status of the menial laborer. For in the one, when the polls are closed, we are continuously reminded of "Othello's occupation gone." In the other, the abundance of raw and uncouth labor robs it of its vitality as ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... power, passion, and pride were so strangely apportioned, there should have been occasionally something more than mere irritation—a struggle of angry wills. Victoria, no more than Albert, was in the habit of playing second fiddle. Her arbitrary temper flashed out. Her vitality, her obstinacy, her overweening sense of her own position, might well have beaten down before them his superiorities and his rights. But she fought at a disadvantage; she was, in very truth, no longer her own mistress; a profound preoccupation ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... the clutching, dry twigs, over the mats of fragrant needles to the covert where she had once spied upon Jean Isbel. And here she lay face down for a while, hands clutching the needles, breast pressed hard upon the ground, stricken and spent. But vitality was exceeding strong in her. It passed, that weakness of realization, and she awakened ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... denser population than could be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk being an object with God that space itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it; and since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with vitality is a principle—indeed, as far as our judgments extend, the leading principle in the operations of Deity, it is scarcely logical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute, where we daily trace it, and not extending ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... too young and his vitality too great to give himself up long to despair. He was a prisoner, but what of it? He had been a prisoner before and escaped. To be sure, it was too much to expect to escape by way of the sky as he had before. Lightning seldom strikes twice in the same place. But there might be ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... childhood into manhood begins in the twelfth or thirteenth year, passes its most acute stage at about fifteen, and may not complete itself until the twenty-fifth year. It is preceded by a period of mobilization of vitality as if nature were preparing for this wonderful re-birth whereby the individualistic boy becomes the socialized progenitor ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... mouth wide open. He was astonished and not a little alarmed at the strength and vitality of this man. And only a few hours before Williams had learnt with deep satisfaction that Henson would be confined to ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... chill already upon it. Again he seemed filled with a strange vitality, other than his own. This phenomenon frightened him more than the first, so that he would hurry to look at Carlin lest the strength had come from her. He tried to think the strength back to her; to think all his own besides; but there was no drive to his mind-work ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... are people who, having nothing to say, are cursed with a facility and an unhappy command of words, that makes them the prime nuisances of the society they affect. They try to cover their absence of matter by an unwholesome vitality of delivery. They look triumphantly round the room, as if courting applause, after a torrent of diluted truism. They talk in a circle, harping on the same dull round of argument, and returning again ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... correspondence, what an exaggeration of malignities, what a crackling bonfire of incendiary falsehoods, might we not gather together! And a lie once set going, having the breath of life breathed into it by the father of lying, and ordered to run its diabolical little course, lives with a prodigious vitality. You say, "Magna est veritas et praevalebit." Psha! Great lies are as great as great truths, and prevail constantly, and day after day. Take an instance or two out of my own little budget. I sit near ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... party, and forming them into a system, whence it was soon found that his cabinet was unpopular; and, at no distant period of time, it was compelled to give place to another. In the whole course of its existence, indeed, it exhibited the lack of that vitality which could alone make ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... on the horizon against the blue line of the Pacific. It took a mighty impetus to carry its decisions and opinions across the wall of the Sierra and over the desert to the East. Fame and reputation, unless the greatest, had not vitality for so long a flight. So the strange and fantastic story should come as a discovery, the one remarkable achievement of an unknown author, who, unfortunately, is no longer here to enjoy an Indian summer ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes

... and profundity of sigh, suspense (more agonizing than suspension), despair, prostration, grinding of the teeth, the hollow and spectral laugh of a heart forever broken, and all the other symptoms of an annual bill of vitality; and every new pledge of his affections sped him toward the pledge-shop. But never had he crossed that fatal threshold; the thought of his uniform and dignity prevailed; and he was not so mean as to send a child to do what the father ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... and Haldor, straining until their oars cracked again. The foam hissed from the blades, and the Swan rushed as if she had been suddenly endued with true vitality. ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... the dialogue; the homeliness of the old leech-gatherer; these all seemed to be outside the realm of the heroic, the elevated, the sublime,—the particular business of poetry, as she mistakenly thought. The reason why John Masefield admires this poem is because of its vitality, its naturalness, its easy dialogue—main characteristics of his own work. In writing The Daffodil Fields, he consciously or unconsciously selected the same metre, introduced plenty of conversation, as he loves to do in all ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... long rains, dark days, and sad associations. Although Mrs. Smiley was not at all a "weakly woman," constant effort and care, and the absence of anything very flattering in her future, or inspiring in her present, wore upon her, exhausting her vitality too rapidly for perfect health, as the constantly increasing delicacy of her appearance testified. In truth, when the spring opened, she found herself so languid and depressed as to be hardly able to teach, in addition to her house-work. Then it was that ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... high spirits all through the luncheon, and Douglass was carried out of his dark gravity by her splendid vitality, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... of Genesis were not designed to teach the Hebrew certain physical facts of nature, they gave him the knowledge that he might lawfully study nature. For he learnt from them that nature has no power nor vitality of its own; that sun, and sea, and cloud, and wind are not separate deities, nor the expression of deities that they are but "things," however glorious and admirable; that they are the handiwork of ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... he must have a lot of vitality to have lasted this long—may be he'll live through it yet. Hold him on the plate, and get his exact measurements." He turned to the communicator. "Doctor von Steiffel? Can you come down to the control room a minute? We may want you to operate upon one ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... had proved that not only would the delay be serious, but the luggage would be destroyed by the extreme jolting over rocks and ruts, which had already injured several of our boxes and broken some useful articles. Every package seemed to assume an individual vitality and to attack its neighbour; the sharp-cornered metal boxes endeavoured to tunnel through the cases of wine and liquors, which in retaliation bumped against and bruised their antagonists, and a few marches had already caused more mischief than ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... angular and strong. She climbed the rigging to the lookout, and then was scolded by her uncle, who was really proud of her and chuckled at her performance. Her features were rather coarse, but her lustrous eyes and bubbling vitality caused the one sound peeper of Girard to follow ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... nurses with us had given a flower she was wearing, and how he had smiled as he put it to his face with his gaunt, white hand. "It doesn't take long," she had said, "when they get like that. They have so little vitality to go on, and some morning between two and five"—and sure enough ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... the anterior one of which a funnel- shaped and highly irritable mouth can be protruded. For some time after the rest of the animal was completely dead from the effects of salt water or any other cause, this organ still retained its vitality. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin



Words linked to "Vitality" :   ch'i, good health, chi, dead, vigor, animateness, vital, vigour, biology, muscularity, light, biological science, elan vital, life force, liveness, alive, aliveness, ki, twinkle, force, healthiness, qi, juice, spark, sparkle, live



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