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Buoyancy   /bˈɔɪənsi/   Listen
Buoyancy

noun
(pl. buoyancies)
1.
Cheerfulness that bubbles to the surface.  Synonym: perkiness.
2.
The property of something weightless and insubstantial.  Synonym: airiness.
3.
The tendency to float in water or other liquid.
4.
Irrepressible liveliness and good spirit.  Synonym: irrepressibility.



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"Buoyancy" Quotes from Famous Books



... along the shores of the island, he talked of his schemes, and of a certain sense of fear that they gave him, lest they were too vast to be accomplished by his means and in his lifetime, but with the sanguine buoyancy of a man still in full vigour, and who had met with almost ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... melancholy that seized her in all her solitary moments? Her nature had lost its buoyancy, its old gift ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... suggestion of her former buoyancy in Kate's manner. Her eyes had something of their old-time sparkle as she reached inside the blousing front of her flannel shirt and laid in Mrs. Toomey's hand a packet of crisp banknotes secured by bands ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... pretty dancing wavelets just where they ran, lipped with jewelled spray, on the shore, and then only had I a chance to scrutinise their material. I patted that one we were upon inside and out. I noted with a seaman's admiration its lightness, elasticity, and supreme sleekness, its marvellous buoyancy and fairy-like "lines," and after some minutes' consideration it suddenly flashed across me that it was all of gourd rind. And as if to supply confirmation, the flat land we were approaching on the opposite side of the bay was covered by the characteristic ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... forerunner of divination and treasure-discovery,—he could not forego that opportunity of trying his luck, without hazarding a dangerous example. He was also conscious of feeling "chipper,"—another local expression for buoyancy of spirit, not common to men who work fifty feet below the surface, without the stimulus of air and sunshine, and not to be overlooked as an important factor in fortunate adventure. Nevertheless, noon came without the discovery of any treasure. He had attacked the walls ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... followed by a wild, confused, dizzy sensation at the brain. The floor seemed to glide from under him—his feet seemed to move on air—a mighty and unearthly gladness rushed upon his spirit—he felt too buoyant for the earth—he longed for wings, nay, it seemed in the buoyancy of his new existence, as if he possessed them. He burst involuntarily into a loud and thrilling laugh. He clapped his hands—he bounded aloft—he was as a Pythoness inspired; suddenly as it came this preternatural transport passed, though only partially, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... His buoyancy forsook him. He was occasionally nervous and fretful. The fog, he declared, felt like a winding sheet, enwrapping and strangling him. At one of his entertainments he made a grim, serio-comic allusion to this. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... men were Frank McGowan and C. F. Hanington, both of whom had been for nearly seven years in the employ of the Edison Electric Light Company in New York. The former was a stocky, rugged Irishman, possessing the native shrewdness and buoyancy of his race, coupled with undaunted courage and determination; and the latter was a veteran of the Civil War, with some knowledge of forest and field, acquired as a sportsman. They left New York in September, 1887, arriving in due time at Para, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... childhood, then through the sorrowful days of womanhood when I was learning how to live, through the years of heartache and heart-break,—and through it all, though I actually suffer, there, is such an unspeakable lightness and buoyancy, such a lifting up, that even pain is a pleasure. I can't explain it all, unless it is the influence of this mysterious country, lulling and soothing, but powerful and ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... piece market has been uncommonly brisk to-day, and all the goods on hand have been cleared off. At present all the workmen are in full employment, though at very low wages; but a few markets of this kind will have a tendency to get up wages. The ready sale of goods has given a buoyancy to the wool market, and the dealers in the raw material have not been so eager ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... on either side. The shark was of the description found in the North Seas, which is called by the sailors the blind shark. I now perfectly understood that he had been caught and spritsail yarded, as the seamen term it, and then turned adrift for their diversion. The buoyancy of the spar prevents the animal from sinking down under the water, and this punishment of their dreaded enemy is a very ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... at him closely. The buoyancy of his morning mood was gone, and it was hard for him to endure her searching look. It came over him that he was an apostate; one who had abandoned all that he had vowed to uphold; his vanity smarted at the thought that she must think him weak ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... was a little too much for you that time!" laughed Archie, as the children, panting from their run, waited for the restoration of their plaything. He measured the buoyancy of the balloon against the ballast, and let go of it with a little toss that seemed to free it, then he sprang up and caught ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... impatiently pawing the ground, and ears pricked up as if listening for the voice that had mastered him. In the ruffled mane, the rider's breezy hair and erect attitude, there was a suggestion of suddenly arrested motion, of strength, courage, and youthful buoyancy that contrasted sharply with the supine grace of the 'Dolce far Niente' sketch. Laurie said nothing but as his eye went from one to the other, Amy saw him flush up and fold his lips together as if he read and accepted the little lesson she had given him. That satisfied ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... immense, airy bedroom, with its seven windows, intended for Aunt Mary, to a porte cochere to protect her against the inclemency of the weather upon returning from a drive. But this house, in the building of which she took so keen an interest, she was not destined to inhabit, although with that buoyancy of mind and tenacity to life that characterized her during her long years of weary illness, she contemplated being carried into it during the early days of last October, and even ordered fires to be lighted to carry off the dampness ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... and break his spirit, there was no fear that he would tire in the pursuit of his ambition when fortune began to smile upon him. He had touched life on many sides. He had kept his warmth of sympathy, his buoyancy, his capacity for rising superior to ill-fortune; and the years of adversity had only deepened his feeling for all that were oppressed. He had much to learn about the craft of letters; but he already had the first essential of an author—he ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... looked now, for the first time for eight long years, upon British ground, many an eye filled, and many a heaving breast told how full of recollections that short moment was, and how different our feelings from the gay buoyancy with which we had sailed from that same harbour for the Peninsula; many of our best and bravest had we left behind us, and more than one native to the land we were approaching had found his last rest in the soil of the stranger. It was, then, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... 'fountain of youth and beauty,' whose rejuvenating waters could restore the elasticity of youth to the frame of age, smoothing away its wrinkles, and imprinting the bloom of childhood upon its cheeks, bringing back the long-lost freshness and buoyancy to the soul; would not the navigators of those dangerous seas be multiplied in the ratio of a million to one? Should we not all become Ponce de Leons, braving every danger, submitting to every privation, sacrificing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and elate, but I was in no sort of mood to share in his buoyancy. Physically I had fully recovered from my terrible manhandling, but in spirit I still writhed at the outrage of it. And the worst was I could do nothing. The law could not help me, for there were no witnesses to the assault. I could never cope with this man in bodily strength. Why was ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... when they returned to the tent, where they found that Alice and Poopy had arranged their supper with the most scrupulous care and nicety. These too, with the happy buoyancy of extreme youth, had temporarily forgotten their position, and, when their male companions entered, were deeply engaged in a private game of a "tea party," in which hard biscuit figured as bun, and ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... buoyancy rose again with the fire, and we made a very light meal off the food that we had with us. It was not more than a few mouthfuls apiece, but nothing could be got here. Then we solemnly stood round the ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... only because it gives us the means of pressing some of the powers of nature into our service, and of making them perform the principal part of what, we must otherwise have wholly performed ourselves. In navigation is it possible to doubt that the powers of nature—the buoyancy of the water, the impulse of the wind, and the polarity of the magnet—contribute fully as much as the labours of the sailor to waft our ships from one hemisphere to another? In bleaching and fermentation the whole ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... the immense, shapeless mass of debris on which they were traveling might be replaced by something light and manageable which he would make by lashing some trimmed trunks together with lengths of bamboo to give additional buoyancy. As he brooded this in silence, with that deep, inward look in his eyes which always kept A-ya from breaking in upon his vision, he came to the idea of a formal raft, and a formal paddle. And to this he added, with a full sense of its value, A-ya's suggestion that ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... grasp the fact that he was dying. The "year to two" of life that Washburn had allowed to him had somehow become converted in my mind to vague years, a fate with no immediate meaning; the meanwhile he himself appeared to grow from day to day in buoyancy. How could I know it was his great heart rising ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... weeks that followed her engagement were like a beautiful dream, but one that was created largely by the springing hopes and buoyancy of youth, and the witchery of her own vivid imagination. The springtime had come again, and the beauty and promise of her own future seemed reflected in nature. Every day she took long drives into the country with her lover, or made expeditions to picture galleries in New York; again, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... the easy familiarity of the backwoods. He treated the boy and man who rode with him as comrades of at least a year's standing, and they felt in return that he was one of them, a man to be trusted. They retained all the buoyancy which the receipt of the dispatch had given them, and Dick, his heart beating high, scarcely felt the wind ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... there was a strange, new, throbbing buoyancy, the gladness that sings, the joy that sparkles. The elixir of life had been set suddenly before him. He did not taste and put it away as some men do; he did not sip sparingly and temperately; but he drank deeply and swiftly so that ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... few moments she did not move. The buoyancy of her nature was still considerable, and his last words had thrilled her and made her almost as happy as if he would return in an hour. She rose finally and walked across the hall, her inclination divided between the Senate Gallery where she might look at ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... mass of modern landscape all around, and even compared with other followers of the Barbizon school, seems somewhat somber, as compared with the vital buoyancy of Redfield and others of Redfield's type. His range of idealistic landscape subjects is intimate, but not characterized by the stirring suggestion of outdoors which Inness, Wyant, and others of his school possess. Keith's marvelous dexterity of brushwork ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... near Trirodov's colony, ascended it again to the other side, walked along the already familiar path, and opened the gate—this time it yielded without effort. They entered. Soon they saw a lake before them. The children and their instructresses were bathing. There was a spirit of buoyancy in the brown nakedness disporting itself in the buoyant waters—buoyant were the splashes, the ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... trembling, and saw his little college room; his clothes hanging on the door, the photographs of his father and mother, of Chopin and Wagner on the chest of drawers. The familiar sight reassured him at once, and his natural buoyancy of ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... future, for one reason, because we attribute to the future our own growing sense of fatigue, the feelings of evening. But the future will, for those to whom it belongs, be morning, with the vigour and buoyancy of the awakening. Our ideal would be to preserve in the future the beautiful things—certain flowers of tradition and privilege—of the past. 'Tis a delusion. We might as well hope to keep the old leaves on the trees into next summer. But after the old ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee

... General Jackson only as they saw him in public would have found it hard to believe that there could be such a transformation as he exhibited in his domestic life. He luxuriated in the freedom and liberty of his home, and his buoyancy and joyousness often ran into a playfulness and abandon that would have been incredible to those who saw him only when he put on his official dignity."* (* Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson page 108.) It was seldom, indeed, except under his ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... his walk, when there came in, or more strictly speaking, there shot in, a young, auburn-curled, blue-eyed man, whose adolescent buoyancy, as much as his delicate, silver-buckled feet and clothes of perfect fit, pronounced him all-pure Creole. His name, when it was presently heard, accounted for the blond type by revealing a ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... the general had first brought home his young wife, before her buoyancy had faltered, and before the five little head-boards to the five stillborn children had been set up amid the periwinkle in the family graveyard, Aunt Griselda had written from the home of her sister to say that she would stop over at Battle Hall on ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... the rocks by the water rising and compressing the air in the two foremost holds, assisted by the buoyancy of the engine room and No. 3 compartments. At high water the bow was afloat, but she was aground by the stern. When, however, she was taken in tow by three tugs, she slowly slid down the reef and floated into deep water. One tug was placed on each bow, and the third ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various

... be unsafe. The long wells combined with a low freeboard lacerated their imaginations. They could not speak of it without exhibiting strong emotion. "Suppose," said they, "a sea were to break into the fore well and fill it, the vessel would obviously become overburdened. Her buoyancy would be nil, and she ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... not herself have explained the sense of buoyancy which seemed to lift and swing her above the sun-suffused world at her feet. Was it love, she wondered, or a mere fortuitous combination of happy thoughts and sensations? How much of it was owing to the spell of the perfect afternoon, the scent of the fading woods, the thought ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... exception. His skin was almost fair, his features almost Caucasian in their regularity; his dark eye lighted up with a peculiar brightness, and there was a remarkable buoyancy and glow about him every way. He was about twenty years old. How long he had been in California I know not. When he came into my office to see me the first time, he rushed forward and impulsively grasped ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... right in setting them at defiance. He was fonder of puns than became so great a man. His barbarisms were those of his age. His genius was his own. He had no objection to float down with the stream of common taste and opinion: he rose above it by his own buoyancy, and an impulse which he could not keep under, in spite of himself or others, and "his delights did shew ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... lengthy conversation which was carried on with as little reserve on both sides as if we had been intimate friends from our youth, and which conveyed to me the comfortable assurance that Mr. Pickwick's buoyancy of spirit, and indeed all his old cheerful characteristics, were wholly unimpaired. As he had spoken of the consent of my friends as being yet in abeyance, I repeatedly assured him that his proposal was certain to receive their most joyful sanction, and several times entreated that he ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... to the ranch with such a charming companion aboard. The fresh June breeze had loosened a strand or two of her brown hair. The bright, strong sunshine merely emphasized the youthful perfection of her complexion. She had walked with a certain buoyancy of carriage which Lowell ascribed to athletics. Her eyes were brown, and rather serious of expression, but her smile was quick and natural—the sort of a smile that brings one in return, so Lowell concluded in his fragmentary process of cataloguing. Her youth was the splendid ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... they had been varnished. In every spot, indeed, where her pure arterial blood, full of animation and heat, could make its way to the skin and shine through the surface, it proclaimed her high health and the vivid life and joyous buoyancy of her glorious youth. Her eyes were very large, and of a velvet softness. Now they glanced, sparkling and shining with comic humor or intelligence and wit; and now they widened and extended themselves, languishing and swimming between their double fringes of long crisp eyelashes, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... some moments he stood, clinging upon the poop, awaiting the end. But the end came slowly. The Solon was a stoutly timbered ship. Much of her lading had been cast overboard, but more remained and gave buoyancy to the wreckage. And as the Athenian awaited, almost impatiently, the final disaster, something called his eye away from the heaving sky-line. Human life was still about him. Wedged in a refuge, betwixt two capstans, the Orientals were sitting, awaiting doom like ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... of straw. These we secured to four of the stoutest canes we could find, passing them through the bands crosswise, and after a good deal of difficulty, and at the risk of undoing our work, we managed to thrust it off the bank into the river, where, to my great delight, upon trying it, the buoyancy far exceeded my expectations. In fact, though we could not have stood upon it, lying down it supported us well, and without any hesitation, after cutting a couple of light poles for steering or directing, we thrust ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... the interview the knights followed one another off; and the buoyancy of their walk must be seen to be believed. The students have seen it and believe it so thoroughly that, when they meet one another in the Quattro Canti, they not unfrequently adopt it to the amusement of the bystanders. But the students make the ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... it is probable their country will not need them, until they arrive at an age, when neither body nor mind are attuned for commencing a life of hardship, however well adapted to continue in it. We have had the advantage there—we trod the soldier's proudest stage when our hopes and buoyancy of heart were at their highest; and for myself, I am satisfied that much of my present happiness, arises from the very different life of ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... pleasant and instructing one, I trust, if I may ever be permitted to execute this design; instructive if it shall point while in embryo, and serve to teach me the folly of presumptuous schemes conceived during the buoyancy of youth, and only relinquished on a discovery of incompetency in later years. Meanwhile I am only contemplating ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... up by its buoyancy," he said. "We may find it looser as we get down. In the meantime, suction's no use; we have got to break it out by hand. Start your winch and we'll fill ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... that, though it pleased the eye, did not really constitute her real charm. It was more the idea of strength, and buoyancy, and the love of humanity she gave out, that attracted young and old, rich and poor, dogs, children, and the sick of soul and ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... satisfactory explanations. He first called our attention to the splendid qualities of the life-boat: such as its power to right itself if upset; the capability of immediate self-discharge when filled with water; its strength; resistance to overturning; speed against a heavy sea; buoyancy; and facility in ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... he bent his brows in worrying thought, the color was returning to Iris's cheeks, and natural buoyancy to her step. It is the fault of all men to underrate the marvelous courage and constancy of woman in the face of difficulties and trials. Jenks was no exception ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... heart is old," no one believed it, and he did not believe it himself, for he entitled the piece 'Fanfaronnade'; and in fact it was nothing more than a fanfaronnade. The book was full of the freshness, buoyancy, and frolicsome petulance of youth. Here and there a few reminiscences might be traced to the earliest poets of the sixteenth century, more particularly to Clement Marot. A tinge of the expiring romanticism ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... distributed along the gun and berth-decks, with similar orders; and, to crown all, several carronade guns were unshipped from their carriages, and swung in their breechings from the beams of the main-deck, so as to impart a sort of vibratory briskness and oscillating buoyancy to the frigate. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... humorist—with his shrieking Philistinism, his dominant sense for the colossally incongruous, his spontaneous faculty for staggering, ludicrous contrast. To the reflective, Mark Twain subsumed within himself a "certain surcharge and overplus of power, a buoyancy, and a sense of conquest" which typified the youth of America. It is memorable that he breathed in his youth the bracing air of the prairie, shared the collective ardour of the Argonauts, felt the rising thrill of ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... cried Potts, enchanted with the success of the experiment; "leave her where she is, that her buoyancy may be fully attested. You know, masters," he cried, with a loud voice, "the meaning of this water ordeal. Our sovereign lord and master the king, in his wisdom, hath graciously vouchsafed to explain the matter thus: 'Water,' he saith, 'shall refuse to receive them (meaning witches, of course) in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Boyd made his adieus; but in leaving he bore with him a weight of doubt and uneasiness in strange contrast with the buoyancy he had felt upon ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... now the buoyancy o' youth, And a' its joys are gane— My children scatter'd far and wide, And I am left alane; For she who was my hope and stay, And soothed me when distress'd, Within the narrow house of death Has lang ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... increased, both physically and intellectually. I experienced a buoyancy of spirits and a vigour of body I had never known before. I felt a pleasure in action. My blood seemed to rush warmer and swifter through my veins, and I fancied that my eyes reached to a more distant vision. I could look boldly ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... at Bitumen. Her father was the only really young person she knew, for although in years he was not young, yet in the joy he took in living, he was still a boy. He had the buoyancy of youth and the ability of manhood. No laugh came clearer or more often than his. No one could be ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... corner we may barely make out the portion of an anchor. The meaning of the old symbol is that hope keeps the soul firm, as an anchor holds the ship. The face of which we have a glimpse is girlish and innocent; the figure is full of buoyancy. The left arm and the uplifted hands ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... filling the tanks. When full, we still have three hundred pounds reserve buoyancy, and would have to go ahead and steer down. But we won't go ahead. Come forward, and ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... Smith had passed many days in the society of Mr. Gilmour it became clear to the practised eye of the medical man that his colleague had been overstraining his health and strength. Notwithstanding his buoyancy and occasional high spirits all through his long years of work, James Gilmour had been subject to spells of severe depression. There are a very large number of brief entries in his diary to that effect. 'Felt blue to-day' is a frequent phrase, followed soon in the great majority of instances ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... that she did not take these tidings with his own buoyancy. "What made you stop her?" she asked, in some wonder. "Sit down, Rash. Tell me the ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... his patient labors, while I settled down to a steady row southward. At Albany, the capital of the state, which is said to be one hundred and fifty miles distant from New York city, there is a tidal rise and fall of one foot. A feeling of buoyancy and independence came over me as I glided on the current of this noble stream, with the consciousness that I now possessed the right boat for my enterprise. It had been a dream of my youth to become acquainted with the charms of ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... was ebbing through the Golden Gate. Was I, then, being carried out to sea? And the life-preserver in which I floated? Was it not liable to go to pieces at any moment? I had heard of such things being made of paper and hollow rushes which quickly became saturated and lost all buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke. And I was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial vastness. I confess that a madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and beat the water with my ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... morning found the little Countess in the highest spirits. Particularly good news had arrived from her land with the early courier. True, the news were more than ten days old, but she had that insuperable buoyancy of hopefulness which attends ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... the wild canon beneath the brilliant African moon the call of the jungle was strong upon him. The solitude and the savage freedom filled his heart with life and buoyancy. Again he was Tarzan of the Apes—every sense alert against the chance of surprise by some jungle enemy—yet treading lightly and with head erect, in proud consciousness ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... part of the Debacle may be all very fine; but I cannot read it. It suffers from impaired vitality, and uncertain aim; two deadly sicknesses. Vital—that's what I am at, first: wholly vital, with a buoyancy of life. Then lyrical, if it may be, and picturesque, always with an epic value of scenes, so that the figures remain in the mind's eye ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... decided aversion to it when discoloured with mud[1]; and the eagerness with which he precipitates himself into the tanks and streams attests his exquisite enjoyment of the fresh coolness, which to him is the chief attraction. In crossing deep rivers, although his rotundity and buoyancy enable him to swim with a less immersion than other quadrupeds, he generally prefers to sink till no part of his huge body is visible except the tip of his trunk, through which he breathes, moving beneath the surface, and only now and then raising his head to look that he is keeping the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... exterminating edge to slavery. Shall the United States—the free United States, which could not bear the bonds of a king—cradle the bondage which a king is abolishing? Shall a Republic be less free than a Monarchy? Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the earliest period in a man's life when his infirmities may overwhelm him. We have not pretended to carry the toiler on to dry land; it is beyond our power. What we have done is to strap a lifebelt around him, whose buoyancy, aiding his own strenuous exertions, ought to enable ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... domestic life, and from society, had exaggerated his peculiarities; and under the pressure of misfortune, caused in a great measure by his own negligence, he had completely given way, without a particle of his sister's patience or buoyancy, and had merely striven to drown his troubles in engrossing problems of his favourite pursuit, till the habit of abstraction had become too confirmed to be shaken off. When the blot on his name was removed, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... She turned half away but she said nothing. Tavernake, with a sudden impulse which had in it nothing of passion—very little, indeed, of affection—lifted her fingers to his lips and passed out of the room. He descended the stairs, filled with a wonderful sense of elation, a buoyancy of spirit which he could not understand. As he walked blithely to his hotel, however, he began to realize how much he had dreaded this interview. He was a free man, after all. The spell was broken. He could think of her now as she ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... accusation there was little trace of that high spirit and fortitude shown by far inferior men under like disasters. But the moment the tremendous strain of his misfortunes was taken off, the vigour of his mind recovered itself. The buoyancy of his hopefulness, the elasticity of his energy, are as remarkable as his profound depression. When the end was approaching, his thoughts turned at once to other work to be done, ready in plan, ready ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... the worse for wear, with an impaired digestion and a cuticle that showed unmistakable evidence of scurvy. For the first he was put upon short rations; for the second, sand baths on shore were prescribed. Under this treatment poor "Jeff" lost all his buoyancy of spirits and his habitual friskiness, and became sad and dejected, but bore his troubles with patience. He took to the sand baths at once, and gave forth many disgruntled grunts when ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... the examination; his co-conspirator passed meagerly; but Pellams' heart lost little of its wonted buoyancy. This was about the last class of any kind he attended in the week between nomination and election. From the Row to the Hall and from the Hall to Palo Alto he moved with an energy rare to his rotund body. It was a new sensation, politics with a josh ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... For Kitty was nearly at the end of her troubles; her trivial little life, with its commonplace tale of careless wrong and short-lived irony of suffering, telling with the more effect on a nature at once so light and so wanting in buoyancy, was soon to be hurried away and forgotten, amid the chaos of ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... many a coarse fling that they would get no vails from such as we. And once we were invited into the kitchen. He would be soar for half a day at a spell after a piece of insolence out of the common, and then deliver me a solemn lecture upon the advantages of birth in a manor. Then his natural buoyancy would lift him again, and he would be in childish ecstasies at the prospect of getting to London, and seeing the great world; and I began to think that he secretly cherished the hope of meeting some of its votaries. For I had told ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... things became viewless, became blackness; and the great murmur deepened, like the murmur of a rising tide; and the earth seemed to sink from beneath him. His feet no longer touched the ground; a sense of supernatural buoyancy pervaded every fibre of his body: he felt himself floating in obscurity; then sinking softly, slowly, like a feather dropped from the pinnacle of a temple. Was this death? Nay, for all suddenly, as transported by the Sixth Supernatural ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn

... one-half pound each week after they have gotten rid of all the unhealthy unnecessary tissue, those underweight frequently losing five pounds before they begin to show any gain. It will surely bring back youthful buoyancy and insure your health and figure for the future. After you have succeeded in getting down to the right poundage you can go on my balanced diet for those who have reduced, but you will still have to do about ten minutes of my exercises every ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... services were accepted. Divesting herself of some of her garments, as tending to impede her progress, she stood prepared for the hazzardous adventure; and when the gate was opened, she bounded forth with the buoyancy of hope, and in the confidence of success. Wrapt in amazement, the Indians beheld her spring forward; and only exclaiming, "a squaw, a squaw," no attempt was made to interrupt her progress. Arrived at the door, she proclaimed her embassy. Col. Zane fastened ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... principles of chivalry (except when the unfortunate victim was of too low a rank to be removed by any other means), that when they recalled the gallantry, the frankness of speech and deed, the careless buoyancy, the quickly subdued passion, and easily accorded forgiveness of injury, which had ever before characterized young Stanley, they could not believe his guilt: but then came the recollection of the startling proofs against him, and such belief ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... with which the high-spirited young fellows panted for battle. Every one who witnessed that scene—the marshaling of the Confederate army for attack upon the morning of the sixth of April—must remember more distinctly than any thing else, the glowing enthusiasm of the men, their buoyancy and spirited impatience to close with the enemy. As each regiment formed upon the ground where it had bivouacked, the voice of its commander might be heard as he spoke high words of encouragement to his men, and it would ring clearer as ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... unhallowed intercourse with evil spirits. This treatment, operating upon a sensitive mind and a body debilitated both by labour and scanty and unwholesome food, had the natural effect of robbing him of hope and buoyancy of spirits. In a fit of desperation he enlisted in the militia, and with other Helpstone youths was marched off to Oundle, a small town lying between Peterborough and Northampton. He remained at Oundle for a few weeks, at the end of which time the regiment was disbanded ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... porch, clinching his fingers, and listening to the jaunty retreating footstep. There was something different in Fred's walk even, a buoyancy as if he could override any little difficulties that fate might have in store for him. Jack smiled grimly. Fortune had showered every good gift upon him. He would go proudly, successfully, through life. He would be praised and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... form of these animals, and the buoyancy given to them by their long, floating hair, endow them with great facility for swimming; while the small compass into which they will pack in a canoe or skiff makes them very useful companions to the sportsman whose propensities are for paddling about "in the melancholy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... of our bows being now completed, the ships were released from the ice by sawing round them; an operation which caused them to rise in the water six inches and a half, in consequence of the increased buoyancy ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... often found herself leaning on Nancy nowadays; not as a dead weight, but with just the hint of need, just the suggestion of confidence, that youth and strength and buoyancy respond to so gladly. It had been decided that the house should be vacated as soon as a tenant could be found, but the "what next" had not been settled. Julia had confirmed Nancy's worst fears by accepting her aunt's offer of a home, but had requested ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... bellowed over the wild waste of waters, and were echoed and prolonged by the mountain waves. As I saw the ship staggering and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she regained her balance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water; her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of the helm preserved ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... Rapid Movements on Land. Lightness of skeleton is a walking or running or flying adaptation, and not at all a swimming one; a swimming animal needs gravity in its skeleton, because sufficient buoyancy in the water is always afforded by the lungs and soft tissues of the body. The extraordinary lightness of these dinosaur vertebrae may therefore be put forward as proof of supreme fitness for the propulsion of an enormous ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... Princess Elizabeth, and the pitching down of Anton Ulrich and his Munnichs, who had before pitched Bieren down. After which, matters remained more stationary at Petersburg: Czarina Elizabeth, fat indolent soul, floated with a certain native buoyancy, with something of bulky steadiness, in the turbid plunge of things, and did not sink. On the contrary, her reign, so called, was prosperous, though stupid; her big dark Countries, kindled already into growth, went on growing rather. And, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... a wealthy merchant, styled Sir John Bawdon—a man proud of his civic station and riches, and thinking lightly of lawyers and law. When Somers stated his property and projects, the rental of his small landed estate and the buoyancy of his professional income, the opulent knight by no means approved the prospect offered to his child. The lawyer might die in the course of twelve months; in which case the Worcestershire estate would be still a small estate, and the professional ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... lures. Whether you approach in the early morning, when gulls arc wheeling above the palette of tones of the Bay, or at night, when illuminated ferryboats glide by like the yellow-bannered halls of fable, the buoyancy of San ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood

... and moral chasms. It creates an atmosphere of charity and sympathy. In fact, the typical American humor, according to the opinion of Mr. Johnston, emphasizes the broad and humane side of our common nature. It reveals the common soul. It possesses a surplusage of power, of buoyancy and of conquest over circumstances. It means at its best a ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... emotion among a wide circle of friends. She was the only and much beloved child of her bereaved parents;—naturally of a most amiable disposition, and of that lively temperament which gives a peculiar zest to life and all its passing enjoyments, she diffused around her somewhat of the buoyancy and sunshine which seemed ever to attend her own steps. Thus attractive and admired, and drinking largely of the cup of present pleasures, the thoughts of the future appear to have had but little place in her mind. In a state of ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous

... aching heart but was relieved. Like the downpour of a summer shower that suddenly clears the atmosphere to welcome the bright shining sun that follows, so this sudden outburst of grief cleared away the despondency, to be replaced by an exalted, exhilarating feeling of buoyancy and hopefulness. The tears were not dried till mirth took possession—a real hysterical manifestation of the whole party, ending all depression for ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... prompted him to study the various subjects included in this science, and as he stood by his companion, the pilot, he talked quite learnedly about the specific gravity of wood and iron, about displacement, buoyancy, and similar topics. ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic

... her wishes, for it was a perfect night, and she a robust young creature who loved to give her energy a fling. She walked with a peculiar effect of hope and buoyancy, in spite of her habit of sombre sayings, and Rokeby found a pleasure in noting her. She looked what she was, a woman who had never yet ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... repulsive rays alone would give our enemies their best chance to overtake us, since our propellers would be idle and in rising we would be outclassed by many of our pursuers. The swifter craft are seldom equipped with large buoyancy tanks, since the added bulk of them tends to reduce ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... breath for a little while before expiration is conducive to good health, a condition, needless to say, which creates confidence and buoyancy in the singer and adds greatly to the efficiency of his voice and the effectiveness of his performance. Proper breathing is a cleaning process for the interior of the body. It cleanses the residual air, the air that remains in the lungs after ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... to have been much disheartened and depressed by his misfortunes. He possessed in his early life more than the usual share of buoyancy and light-heartedness of youth, and he went away from Rome to enter, perhaps, upon years of exile and wandering, with a determination to face boldly and to brave the evils and dangers which surrounded him, and ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott

... of the moon. The night was waning, and a slight chill began to creep into the air. A little breeze, too, sighed over the sea, ruffling its surface, died away, then softly came again. As he moved into the darkness Maurice was conscious that the buoyancy of his spirits received a slight check. The night seemed suddenly to have changed, to have become more mysterious. He began to feel its mystery now, to be aware of the strangeness of being out in the sea alone at ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... lo, buoyancy caught the old man's feet: for the cymballing and music had grown very fiercely hot, so that all the congregation reeled in dance; and as the lasso drops round the astonished prairie-horse and draws asprawl, so dancing caught and drew ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... seriousness she was never contemplating in her random talk; it may have been an uneasiness of some youthful imprudence in pressing the subject upon a man of his superiority, and that his abrupt climax was a rebuke. But it was only for a moment; her youthful buoyancy, and, above all, a certain common sense that was not incompatible to her high nature, came to her rescue. "But that," she said with quick mischievousness, "would be a SACRIFICE taken in the interest of these people, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... new, stout shoes that did not belong to him Crombie trod with a buoyancy and assurance strongly in contrast with the limp and half-hearted pace to which his old, shabby gaiters had formerly inclined him. He rattled down the stairs of the elevated station with an alacrity almost bumptious; and the sharp, confident step that announced his entrance into ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... circle. I go further than that. If I may permit myself to indulge in language verging almost upon the indelicate, when employed with reference to the other or gentler sex, she has about her a certain air of hoydenish and robustious buoyancy which, I fear me, will but ill conform to the traditions of dear Fernbridge and the soothed and refining spirit ever maintained by the instructor body of our ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... his hands, which he laid on her paternally. His straggly, wiry moustache brushed her forehead in a good-night kiss. She closed the door, and went away from it to the middle of the room before she allowed herself a tired-out sort of laugh, without buoyancy. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... have been private communications of James's favour. But Dryden, always ready to supply with hope the deficiency of present possession, went on his literary course rejoicing. A lively epistle to his friend Etherege, then envoy for James at Ratisbon, shows the lightness and buoyancy of his spirits at this supposed ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... trees. He seemed not at all angry; there was a kind of breezy assurance in his stride and manner. As he reached the messboards where some of the scouts were already seated on the long benches, several noticed this buoyancy in his demeanor. ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... that he could not continue to live on terms of close intimacy both with her daughters and with Norah Geraghty. But the spirits of youth are ever buoyant, and the spirits of no one could be endowed, with more natural buoyancy than those of the young navvy. Charley, therefore, in spite of his misfortunes, was ready with his manuscript when Saturday afternoon arrived, and, according to agreement, met Norman ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... has already been tried," remarked the colonel; "but the buoyancy of a balloon is too slight to permit of its being fitted ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... he was alone, Grant Harlson appeared himself again, and I speak knowingly, for I was with him then. His old self seemed then restored. The buoyancy of boyhood was his as it had never been to me since we were young together. It matters not what a chance,—this is a land where all men drift about,—but I was in the city near him now, and the old relationship was resumed. We rioted in the past of the country, and we visited it together. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... Nick. Suddenly his buoyancy was gone. His shoulders drooped. His cigarette dangled limp. Disappointment curved his lips, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... in sharp relief against the sky, while for once our canvas looked white. Far in the distance the sharp bow would plunge down into the foam, and then our good ship, rising, would shake her shiny sides, as if in joy at her own buoyancy. The busy hum of men marred not the solitary sacredness of midnight on the Atlantic. The moon "walked in brightness," auroras flashed, and meteors flamed, and a sensible presence of Deity seemed to pervade the transparent ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... pre-eminence for dulness in three books of the Dunciad, his anger got the better of his wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far from being dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness of intellect wholly out of harmony with the character he is ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... have been the source of the feeling, it soon passed away, and when the dead had been sewed up in their hammocks and laid to their last rest in the deep—a ceremony we performed the day after our escape—Richard was himself again, and the old careless buoyancy swelled ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... free and wild; the fresh air had brought a bright colour into her cheeks. As is often the case with girls whose figure is just beginning to show itself, her dress seemed somewhat shortened in front—lifted up from her ankles, which gave the effect of buoyancy to her form, she seemed about to walk though standing still. There was a defiant light in her deep brown eyes, that sort of "I don't care" disposition which our grandmothers used to say would take us to the gallows. Defiance, wilfulness, rebellion, was expressed in the very way ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... the queen of all rigs; she has a bounding buoyancy denied to the square-rigged craft, to which she stands in the same relationship as a young girl to a dowager; and the Raratonga was not only a schooner, but the queen, acknowledged of all the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... man Mike flashed upon me at the moment, and I dared not trust myself to break silence. I now thought I could trace in my friend's manner less of that gay and careless buoyancy which ever marked him. There was a tone, it seemed, of more grave and sombre character, and even when he jested, the smile his features bore was not his usual frank and happy one, and speedily gave way to an expression I had never before ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... An attractive buoyancy of temperament is revealed in Henderson's description in his journal of a giant elm with tall straight trunk and even foliage that shaded a space of one hundred feet. Instantly he chose this "divine elm" as the council chamber of Transylvania. Under its leafage he read the ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... large, yet hath Claudia a choice for her maiden. Confusion will take the buoyancy from her supple limbs, and so drawn will her arms be to her face to hide its shame, that the sensuous swing thou dost desire will be stiff as the scabbard on thy wall. Lest she be veiled my maiden can not ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... approved of. In such reflections, however, she never indulged long, ere a sense of the singular destiny which had hitherto attended her, led her back into the more melancholy contemplations from which the buoyancy of her youthful fancy had for a short ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... that hope did not remain with me long. I waited one, two, three weeks, nervously examining my mail every day, looking for some word from her. All of the letters received by me seemed so insignificant, so worthless, because there was none from her. The slight buoyancy of spirit which I had felt gradually dissolved into gloomy heart-sickness. I became preoccupied; I lost appetite, lost sleep, and lost ambition. Several of my friends intimated to me that perhaps I was ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... that, and the very opposite from commonplace, for some of the magic of the coral seas has tinctured his blood. His career as a pearl-shell diver has been illuminated by the discovery of pearls—big and precious. In his youth and buoyancy he gambled them away. Now that his heart is subdued and slow he still looks for pearls, and tempts coy Fortune with dramatic sincerity and most untempting things. He wants one pearl more, that he may acquire the means of travelling ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... where they happen to go astray; yes, in every case where these journalists miss the narrow path of thoughtful prudence. They do miss it occasionally; they must miss it; and we contend that they have missed it at present. What they have done that they ought not to have done. Currency, buoyancy, they ought not to have impressed upon sedition, upon conspiracy, upon treason. Currency, buoyancy, they have impressed upon ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... Americans whose habitual conception of life is unalloyed prosperity. When any experience or observation of his went counter to it he suffered—something like physical pain. He eagerly shrugged away the impression left upon his buoyancy by Lindau, and added to March's continued silence, "What did I tell you about meeting every man in New York that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... and around Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain is grand, far beyond pen picturing. The surroundings had a kind of buoyancy even to the spirits of the badly clad and badly fed soldiers, which caused their stale bread and "cush" to be eaten with a relish. The mountain homes seemed veritable "castles in the air." Looking from the top of Lookout Mountain—its position, its surroundings, its natural fortresses—this would ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... send of the current. But something was preparing. Something indefinite and huge. He guessed it, felt it, knew it. On all sides of him he felt a quickening movement. Lethargy, inertia were breaking up. There was buoyancy to the current. In its ever-increasing swiftness there was exhilaration ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... good many people always buoyant in spirit and mirthful in appearance as if born optimists. There are also no fewer persons constantly crestfallen and gloomy as if born pessimists. The former, however, may lose their buoyancy and sink deep in despair if they are in adverse circumstances. The latter, too, may regain their brightness and grow exultant if they are under prosperous conditions. As there is no evil however small but may cause him to groan under it, who has his heart undisciplined, so there is no calamity ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... in town so large a part of the summer, the children are nearly wild with delight at being in the country once more. Even our demure Una skips about with a buoyancy I have never seen in her; she never has her ill turns when out of the city, and I wish, for her sake, we could always live here. As to Raymond and Walter, I never pretend to see them except at their meals and their bedtime; they just live outdoors, following ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... is a natural result of the enhanced tone and vigor of the physical system, and keeps pace with this. Mental buoyancy and even exhilaration are among the most common sequences of electric baths. Although indirect, these results ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig

... arrival was occupied in making arrangements for his boat. He put into this matter the same painstaking buoyancy that he had put into a dull business for twelve years. He changed his plans half a dozen times, and exceeded them wholly in the size and equipment of the little vessel, and in the consequent expense; but ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... flesh, such as he would vainly seek in any of his living models; he sees a delicate and infinite variety of indentures, of projections, of creases following the bend of every limb; he sees, where the surface still exists intact, an elasticity of skin, a buoyancy of hidden life such as all the colours of his palette are unable to imitate; and in this piece of drapery, negligently gathered over the hips or robed upon the arm, he sees a magnificent alternation of large folds and small creases, of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... quite still for a moment. It was absurd that his heart should be so suddenly heavy, that all the spring and buoyancy should have gone out of life! For the first time he realized the direction in which his thoughts had been travelling since he had left his rooms an hour ago. He had to remind himself that it was the professor whom he ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... guests at the Castle was Lord Palmerston. In spite of his natural buoyancy of temperament he became so much alarmed by what he heard that he suggested another physician should be called in. Her Majesty had not been prepared for this step, and when she appealed to the two ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... companions, and devoted to his profession, he soon became a thorough seaman; while the buoyancy of youth, and his playful, fearless spirit, prompted him continually to feats of extraordinary daring. In the spring of 1775, General Burgoyne took his passage to America in the Blonde, and when he came ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... length taken away until weakened by grief and starvation. He by degrees attached himself to his new master, the Marquis of Worcester, but not with the natural ardour of a poodle. He was attentive to every command, and could perform many little domestic offices. Sometimes he would exhibit considerable buoyancy of spirit; but there oftener seemed to be about him the recollection of older and ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... confidential talk may seem fanciful to any one but an eye-witness. We had only a week's association, but the depression ceased, the furtive look and deprecatory manner were replaced by a joyous buoyancy. In a few weeks the thin neck and awkward body rounded out into the symmetry which usually precedes the establishment of puberty, but which was delayed in this case until the ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... poems, taken altogether, shew him at his best, as we wish to—and as we mainly do—remember him; a man to be loved, admired, even envied, and by no means pitied, for his soul, though often vexed with the irritations incidental to an obscure and toiling lot, has a strength and buoyancy which readily raise it to divine altitudes, where it might well be content to see and smile at the petty class distinctions and the paltry social tyranny from which those irritations chiefly spring. His letters, on the other hand, present him to us less frequently on those commanding altitudes. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... off his mind. Though for the present absolutely at sea as to where to seek Eustacie, the relief from acquiescence in the horrible fate that had seemed to be hers was such, that a flood of unspeakable happiness seemed to rush in on him, and bear him up with a new infusion of life, buoyancy, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... foreground, from the earth to the luminous sky. That effect is the most powerful, sweetest, and most restorative in all nature perhaps; a bath for the soul in pure light and air. That is the incomparable buoyancy and radiance of deepest Tuscan summer. But the winter is, perhaps, even more Tuscan and more austerely beautiful. I am not even speaking of the fact that the mountains, with their near snows and brooding ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... as we could manage with the pumps not acting to their full capacity," answered Earle. "If we could turn the craft on a more level keel we might empty them further, and then her natural buoyancy would ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... in the afternoon watch, the first of an irregular tabular form. The stratified surface had clearly faulted. I suggest that an uneven bottom to such a berg giving unequal buoyancy to parts causes this faulting. The second berg was domed, having a twin peak. These bergs are still a puzzle. I rather cling to my original idea that they become domed when stranded ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... bottle; dipped it down into the Pool. The liquid was extraordinarily light; seemed, in fact, to give the vial buoyancy. I held it to the light. It was striated, streaked, as though little living, pulsing veins ran through it. And its blueness, even in the vial, held an ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... companion of his later days, over which it has pleased God to cast the "shadow before" of that "night in which no man can work." But twelve short months ago he was cheerfully anticipating (in the bright buoyancy of his happy nature) a far other companionship for the short remainder of our earthly sojourn; never forgetting, however, that ours must be short at the longest, and that "in the midst of life we are ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... In this buoyancy she remained some twenty-four hours; and then came clouds and chills, which, in their turn, gave way to exultation, duly followed by depression. Her spirits were so uncertain, that things too minute to justify narration turned the scale either ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... questioning of Charles. "I think it will be time for me to cry too, by-and-by!" said he to her one day, with an air half in jest and half in earnest, that made poor Kate's tears flow afresh. Sleepless nights and days of sorrow soon told upon her appearance. Her glorious buoyancy of spirits, which erewhile, as it were, had filled the whole Hall with gladness—where were they now? Ah, me! the rich bloom had disappeared from her beautiful cheek; but her high spirit, though oppressed, was not broken, and she stood ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... to a friend of Fitzpatrick, who had become so impressed by the Virginian's largeness of manner and buoyancy of enthusiasm that he had whispered to Fitz to bring him in at once and give him any desk in the place; adding that "in a sagging market the colonel would be better than ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... "merry-thought" of a canvas-back duck, the memory of this thing comes over him, and, burying his face in the costly napery, he gives himself up to grief until kind words and a celery-glass-full of turpentine, or something, bring back his buoyancy and rainbow smile. The hospitality and generous treatment of our English brother to Americans now is something beautiful, unaffected, and well worth a voyage across the qualmy sea to see, but when Cockburn burned down the Capitol ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... anxiety; some change which she could scarcely define—a change so gradual that it was only by comparing the Charlotte of some months ago with the Charlotte of the present that she perceived how real a change it was. The buoyancy and freshness, the girlish vivacity of Miss Halliday's manner, were rapidly giving place to habitual listlessness. "Are you tired, dear?" she repeated, anxiously; and Mrs. Sheldon looked round from her ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... he was living in New York with his daughter, I think in Broome Street. On greeting him I noted that he was much disturbed by some annoyance which he could neither conceal nor throw off with his old-time buoyancy of spirit. ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears

... first of the imperiled airmen had been hauled aboard, there remained but Casper Blue himself. The wreck had not as yet sunk wholly, since, relieved from the weight of the heavy man, it seemed to possess enough buoyancy to remain on the surface of the water. But this could be only for a short time; the planes would soon be thoroughly soaked, and then the end must come, when the clinging man would find himself deprived of all support, and must swim or ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... Siegmund whose touch was keen with bliss for her, whose face was a panorama of passing God? She looked at him again. His radiance was gone, his aura had ceased. She saw him a stooping man, past the buoyancy of youth, walking and whistling rather stupidly—in short, something of the 'clothed animal on end', ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... all transforming Time! Can this be he, The iron warrior of a decade since, The gallant youth of earlier years, whose pranks And reckless buoyancy of temper flashed Clear sunshine ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... fat, feeding under a shed; brood sows, with numerous progenies; and fowls actually swarming around. The morning was beautiful; the air, filled with a thousand grateful odours from the fields, imparting to our young minds a buoyancy we had been strangers to since we had left our own native shores. Our hasty survey was made in a few minutes, while we stood waiting further orders. Our master, who had entered another part of the building, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... forlorn little figure which he had left by the roadside kept Jim's smile steady, and added a desperate artificial buoyancy to his ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant

... effect of touching him to see his old hero in action; whereby he was brought about to a proper modesty, so that he really craved no more than for the mistress of this house to breathe the liberal air of a public acknowledgment of her rightful position. Things constituted by their buoyancy to float are remarkable for lively bobbings when they are cast upon the waters; and such was the case with Weyburn, until the agitation produced by Mrs. Pagnell left him free to sail away in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith



Words linked to "Buoyancy" :   life, centre of buoyancy, perkiness, center of buoyancy, buoyant, spirit, inclination, lightness, liveliness, sprightliness, irrepressibility, weightlessness, cheerfulness, airiness, blitheness, tendency



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