Quotes & Sayings About Alacrity

Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. — Henry David Thoreau

With the organization and brevity of a drill sergeant, she began arranging them to her liking.
"Alan here ... " She took him by the arm and stood him between his parents' chairs. "And Shelby." She nudged Shelby beside him. "Caine,you sit in the foor." She tugged on his hand, until grinning, he obliged her. "And Diana-" Caine pulled his wife down on his lap before Gennie could finish. "Yes, that'll do. Justin over here with Rena.And Grant-"
"I'm not-" he began.
"Do as you're told,boy," Daniel bellowed at him,then spoke directly to his grandson. "Leave it to a Campbell to make trouble."
Grumbling,Grant strolled over behind Daniel's chair and scowled down at him. "A fine thing when a Campbell's in a MacGregor family portrait."
"Two Campbells," Shelby reminded her brother with alacrity. — Nora Roberts

It should be done with the same degree of alacrity and nonchalance that you would display in authorizing a highly intelligent trained bear to remove your appendix. — Daniel S. Greenberg

Don [Hewitt, 60 Minutes exec producer] told me, "You have set broadcast journalism back 20 years." Naturally, I was both proud and elated although too modest to say so, but broadcast journalism recovered with alacrity, my contract wasn't renewed, and the incident was forgotten. — Nicholas Von Hoffman

Let us do our best whilst we live for another tomorrow is coming when whilst we are long gone, another group of people shall come to either suffer from our worst or enjoy and build upon our best. Let us run whole heatedly today with all alacrity for another generation shall come for the baton from our hands to either blame us or congratulate us on how we lived the dream and journeyed in life through the good and the bad times; another generation shall come to ponder over our footprints as a good or a bad lesson for them! Let us run with all necessary zeal such that when we hand over the baton, our next generation will have no reason but to soldier on with courage, enthusiasm and absolute commitment to get to the finishing line with a great accomplishment and a noble story worth pondering over and over! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I was also surprised by the alacrity and dedication we devote to the damaging exercise of remembering, which after all brings nothing good and serves only to hinder our normal functioning, like those bags of sand athletes tie around their calves for training. — Juan Gabriel Vasquez

It was a matter of principle, or perhaps of honour, with Brother Cadfael, when a door opened before him suddenly and unexpectedly, to accept the offer and walk through it. He did so with even more alacrity if the door opened on a prospect of Wales; it might even be said that he broke into a trot, in case the door slammed again on that enchanting view. — Ellis Peters

In the spring of 1959, I received an offer of a professorship at Harvard, which I accepted with alacrity since I wanted to be near my family and since the chemistry department at Harvard was unsurpassed. — Elias James Corey

Give me a bowl of wine. I have not that alacrity of spirit Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have. — William Shakespeare

He did a terrible thing and eliminating him would have left the world tidier. Or so goes the logic of the last fifty years of American justice. We throw away flawed people, people who have made terrible mistakes, with regularity and great alacrity. We jail drug dealers for decades, and we execute killers. We want them away. Out of sight. — Dave Eggers

There's a catharsis in cutting down trees. But there's absolutely none of that in picking cotton. It's maddening! It's fiddly, and it pricks your fingers, and it's something that's a very hard skill if you have no alacrity for it. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

There could not be an objection. There could be only a most proper alacrity, a most obliging compliance for public view, and smiled reined in and spirits dancing in private rapture — Jane Austen

The final answer to the question of "Did Moses exist?" is no and yes: No, the character of Moses in the Bible is not a historical person; and, yes, Moses exists - as a mythical figure. In the end, the biblical story of Moses should be understood as folklore, not literal history, similar to the legends of other cultures, and not given divine status. In an age of transparency and information, this suppressed and hidden knowledge needs to be known widely with alacrity. — D.M. Murdock

Sport and singing may require talent, but passion and determination are enough to make you good at practically anything else. Your mind learns with alacrity and excels at virtually anything if it's interested enough. Every decision should start with criteria set by you; and only thereafter do you look at the options that have satisfied your criteria. Having this attitude is the only way your life becomes your own. — Lishen Nair

Personally, I find the idea that women are supposed to "love" shopping bizarre - nearly every woman I know wants to cry after 45 minutes of trawling the high street looking for a shirt and hits the gin with alacrity upon the sad occasions when jeans have to be found. — Caitlin Moran

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, I refute it thus. — James Boswell

When I fight off a disease bent on my cellular destruction, when I marvelously distribute energy and collect waste with astonishing alacrity even in my most seemingly fatigued moments, when I slip on ice and gyrate crazily but do not fall, when I unconsciously counter-steer my way into a sharp bicycle turn, taking advantage of physics I do not understand using a technique I am not even aware of using, when I somehow catch the dropped oranges before I know I've dropped them, when my wounds heal in my ignorance, I realize how much bigger I am than I think I am. And how much more important, nine times out of ten, those lower-level processes are to my overall well-being than the higher-level ones that tend to be the ones getting me bent out of shape or making me feel disappointed or proud. — Brian Christian

Atheists put on false courage and alacrity in the midst of their darkness and apprehensions, like children who, when they fear to go in the dark, will sing for fear. — Alexander Pope

If, sir, men were all virtuous, I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds neither wall, nor mountains, nor seas could afford any security. — Samuel Johnson

He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, unlike those of the wise, harden with age. — Ambrose Bierce

Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. — Henry David Thoreau

You would think that people who had experienced injustice would be loath to inflict it on others, and yet they do so with alacrity. The victims become victimizers with a chilling righteousness. This is the nature of fanaticism, to attract and provoke extremes of behavior. And this is why fanatics are all the same, whatever specific form their fanaticism takes. — Michael Crichton

Strange is the vigour in a brave man's soul. The strength of his spirit and his irresistible power, the greatness of his heart and the height of his condition, his mighty confidence and contempt of danger, his true security and repose in himself, his liberty to dare and do what he pleaseth, his alacrity in the midst of fears, his invincible temper, are advantages which make him master of fortune. — Thomas Traherne

Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation. — Samuel Johnson

Volnaka ... did a remarkable job of getting anyone drunk with alacrity. It also worked well as a combustible in lamps, as paint remover, was a marvelous antiseptic and was singularly effective at erasing any memory of ever having imbibed it — J.R. Hardesty

By multiplying the means of gratification, by promoting the introduction and circulation of the precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate the channels of industry, and to make them flow with greater activity and copiousness. The assiduous merchant, the laborious husbandman, the active mechanic, and the industrious manufacturer,-all orders of men, look forward with eager expectation and growing alacrity to this pleasing reward of their toils. — Alexander Hamilton

I don't mind how many letters I receive from one who interests me as much as you do. The receptive part of correspondence I can carry on with much alacrity. It is writing answers that I groan over. — George Eliot

The painful thing observable about all this business was, the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor ... This man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it. — Mark Twain

If a bell failed to ring, if a stove smoked, if a wheel on a machine stuck, you knew at once where to look and did so with alacrity; you found the defect and knew how to cure it. But the thing within you, the secret mainspring that alone gave meaning to life, the thing within us that alone is living, alone is capable of feeling pleasure and pain, of craving happiness and experiencing it- that was unknown. You knew nothing about that, nothing at all, and if the mainspring failed there was no cure. Wasn't it insane? — Hermann Hesse

Here in Tibet live the people my mother taught me to love before I met them. We are family, and love has undetermined aptitude and great hunger. I wander around town with a heavy heart. You can love a place as you love a person and it is especially easy to feel that way here, where man and nature are intertwined deeply. I commit to memory little things: the thin film of dust incited by the ends of chubas dragging on the earth; the gentle contours of the mountains; the steady gaze of a yak; the alacrity with which children submit to authority; the patience of women who sit in the main square with bottles of milk and yogurt for sale; the songs on the streets. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Move, Kit. I want to get a closer look at that bust."

To Kit, bust only meant one thing, but since the only breasts in the room belonged to Ty's sister, he stepped aside with alacrity. — Cassandra Clare

Wallets can establish connections and change opinions. Things that fall apart can be glued back by money with astonishing alacrity. — Robert Walser

They smiled in their pains and laughed to scorn those who inflicted torments on them, resigned up their souls with great alacrity, expecting to receive them again. — Josephus

The State always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society's advantage, but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage; nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards anti-social purposes is self-sprung. — Albert J. Nock

The poems in Helena Mesa's virtuosic first book, Horse Dance Underwater, run with such speed, verve, and alacrity they leave you breathless, exhilarated, and transformed as if the purest kind of song had lifted you into the air. By this quickness of language finding lyric speech, Mesa's poems remind us of art's joyous and ecstatic effects. — Michael Collier

There are, indeed, few merrier spectacles than that of many windmills bickering together in a fresh breeze over a woody country; their halting alacrity of movement, their pleasant business, making bread all day with uncouth gesticulation; their air, gigantically human, as of a creature half alive, put a spirit of romance into the tamest landscape. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Mrs. Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a facility of saying things which drove him in the opposite direction to the one she desired. Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal goldfish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass. Mrs. Tulliver was an amiable fish of this kind, and after running her head against the same resisting medium for thirteen years would go at it again to-day with undulled alacrity. — George Eliot

I honor most those to whom I show least honor; and where my soul moves with great alacrity, I forget the proper steps of ceremony. — Michel De Montaigne

Nevertheless, he had offered her a home under his own roof, which Lavinia accepted with the alacrity of a woman who had spent the ten years of her married life in the town of Poughkeepsie. — Henry James

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. — Mark Twain

A beaver does not, as legend would have it, know which direction the tree will fall when he cuts it, but counts on alacrity to make up for lack of engineering expertise. — Ann Zwinger