Jaunty Quotes & Sayings

Every nation feels itself to be superior, but in America it's a jaunty feeling, and in some cases a rather ominous one among the super-patriots. — James Salter

Playing Cupid, I should have you know, isn't just a matter of flying around Arcadia and feeling your tiny winkle throb when the lovers finally kiss. It's to do with timetables and street maps, cinema times and menus, money and organisation. You have to be both jaunty cheerleader and lithe psychiatrist. You require the binary skill of being absent when present, and present when absent. — Julian Barnes

He looked like you ripped his heart out of his chest, threw it to
the ground, and stomped all over it while singing a jaunty tune."
Annwyl shrugged at Morfyd's bemused expression. "I might have
seen that look before on his brother."
"Perhaps when you stabbed our father?"
Annwyl laughed. "No. Then he just looked proud. — G.A. Aiken

[S]ongs must be measured by their utility. Any jaunty little tune that can get you from one point to another as you drive, or get you through the dishes, or that can illuminate or dignify your courting, I always appreciate.
-interview, 1995 — Leonard Cohen

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Do you know the anecdote about Rubens? He was serving Holland as Ambassador to Spain and used to spend the afternoon in the royal gardens before his easel. One day a jaunty member of the Spanish Court passed and remarked, 'I see that the diplomat amuses himself sometimes with painting,' to which Rubens replied, 'No, the painter amuses himself sometimes with diplomacy! — Irving Stone

There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble, having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps, there was more to be gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom the years were drawing nigh when she should say, 'I have no pleasure in them', than of her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be passed over here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed quick and warm. — Thomas Hardy

BUYING A PAIR OF shoes is one of the most optimistic acts I know, next to falling in love. I like nothing better than to see an old man wearing a brand new pair of brogues or cap-toed oxfords, preferably jaunty orange-brown, unscuffed, heels unworn. We want to be here tomorrow, but buying new shoes, like falling in love, says I plan on being here tomorrow. — Jonathan Carroll

She had chosen Dante because she found the rhyme scheme pleasingly jaunty, but she realized too late that the Inferno's tale of sinners being cruelly punished in the afterlife was much too bloody and disturbing to be suitable for young minds. Penelope could tell this by the way the children hung on her every word and demanded "More, more!" each time she reached the end of a canto and tried to stop. — Maryrose Wood

In America the chief accusation seems to be one of "Eroticism." This is odd, rather puzzling to my mind. Which Eros? Eros of the jaunty "amours," or Eros of the sacred mysteries? And if the latter, why accuse, why not respect, even venerate? — D.H. Lawrence

She was enveloped from head to foot in a raccoon fur coat, with a jaunty hat of the same, trimmed only with a bright quill feather. — Carolyn Wells

Charlie pushed his fedora back onto his head. Some hats can only be worn if you're willing to be jaunty, to set them at an angle and to walk beneath them with a spring in your stride as if you're only a step away from dancing. — Neil Gaiman

A poor man needs the escape far more than a wealthy man does."
"Escape," Amanda repeated, having never heard a book described in such a way.
"Yes, something to transport your mind from where and who and what you are. Everyone needs that. A time or two in my past, it seemed that a book was the only thing that stood between me and near insanity. I-"
He stopped suddenly, and Amanda realized that he had not meant to make such a confession. The room became uncomfortably quiet, with only the jaunty snap of the fire to intrude on the silence. Amanda felt as if the air were throbbing with some unexpressed emotion. She wanted to tell him that she understood exactly what he meant, that she, too, had experienced the utter deliverance that words on a page could provide. There had been times of desolation in her own life, and books had been her only pleasure. — Lisa Kleypas

The only item that stood out was a pair of orange Crocs I bought one day when I was feeling particularly jaunty. I had a special distaste for these shoes, because I was 76 percent sure that I was dumped as a result of once wearing them. — Charles McDowell

See you in the funny papers, he said. Jaunty, he reminded himself; always jaunty. In my panache is their hope for salvation. — Michael Chabon

E understood far more deeply than anyone else the loneliness that lurked beneath his jaunty mask. — Ryunosuke Akutagawa

With such luck as this, he rode the beast in the jaunty way that she deserved, back north, seemingly back from Mexico, pulling up finally at an outlying bar-ex-saloon (they had covered the old adobe face with knotty pine, substituted big stone matades for the cuspidors) and having brought her wrecklessly this far did not park her in the little parking lot but in front of the church next door. They had lifted that face too and neonized, but it did no good, they seemed to know they had no chance against an older god, their doors were closed. Thus one could join the pagan worshipers with a self-righteous shrug, through latticed doors. — Douglas Woolf

The tattoo on her left forearm. Five digits encoding nothing but the unspoken prohibition on my asking her about them. The jaunty 7 with its continental slash. — Michael Chabon

I keep trying, and manage some workmanlike stuff that doesn't require inspiration, and then I check my phone, check my email, go on Facebook. I read other people's posts, make jaunty comments, flitter away the time, profane the time. — Deborah Meyler

Do I have to give you hair torture to get it out of you?"
What is that? From the light in her eyes and the jaunty uptick of her mouth, I had a sense it would be pleasurable. "Do what you must."
In a dash, she pinned my wrists above my head. Her head dipped and her thick hair engulfed me, sweeping across my face and filling my mouth. "Nooo!" I half-heartedly pressed against her hold.
"Give it up, Dane." I could hear the laughter in her voice.
"Never!" I thrashed my head from side to side, trying to breathe through the black curtain blinding and drowning me. "You're killing me!"
"Jeez, you take this even worse than Matty."
I groaned. "With a sister like you, I feel sorry for him."
There was a sharp rap on the door. "Are you okay in there?" China asked.
Lucia glanced at me, and we both cracked up. — Jennifer Lane

The Chancellor looked down at the empty table for a minute. Then he shrugged, looked up, and gave a surprisingly jaunty smile. All in favor of admitting first-term Kvothe's reckless use of sympathy as proof of mastery of basic principles of sympathy vote by show of hands. — Patrick Rothfuss

The entire city was his hunting ground. In the summer months, dressed in a blazer and wearing his straw hat at a jaunty angle, he would regularly stroll along under the arches, and then along the pier. Next he would ride on the Volks Railway, where in the cramped intimacy of its hard seats he liked to talk to strangers, telling them this was the world's oldest still-running electric train, and boring them with facts about it. — Peter James

In the later nineteenth century, the tops of skyscrapers often took the shape of domes, surmounted by jaunty gilded lanterns; later came ziggurats, mausoleums, Alexandrian lighthouses, miniature Parthenons. These charming follies contained neither royal corpses nor effigies of gods and goddesses; rather they contained large wooden tanks filled with water. — Brendan Gill

What is particularly amusing about cocker spaniels is their swaying gait when they are in a playful mood: it's as if they had tiny little springs screwed to their paws that cause them to bounce upward - but gently, without jolting. This also affects their paws and ears like the rolling of a ship, so cocker spaniels, like jaunty little vessels plying dry land, lend a nautical touch to the urban landscape: utterly enchanting. — Muriel Barbery

Some hats can only be worn if you're willing to be jaunty, to set them at an angle and to walk beneath them with a spring in your stride as if you're only a step away from dancing. They demand a lot of you. — Neil Gaiman

A stab had clearly once been made at de-uglifying these public spaces by painting a corridor a jaunty yellow. This was because, it turned out, babies come here to have their brains tested and someone thought the yellow might calm them. But I couldn't see how. Such was the oppressive ugliness of this building it would have been like sticking a red nose on a cadaver and calling it Ronald McDonald. — Jon Ronson

A phrase (it often happened when he was exhausted) kept cycling round and round, preconsicously, just under the threshold of lip and tongue movement: "Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic." It repeated itself automatically and Stencil improved upon on it each time, placing emphasis on different words - "events seem"; "seem to be ordered"; "ominous logic" - pronouncing them differently, changing the "tone of voice" from sepulchral to jaunty: round and round and round. Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic. — Thomas Pynchon

Yes, Emily Dickenson
a rather exhausting poet, now I come to think of it. All that breathlessness and skipping about. What's wrong with nice, long lines and a jaunty rhythm? — Sarah Waters

Brownstein's is a fresh and jaunty voice, with a jazz snap all his own. — Tama Janowitz

There was always an outrageousness to our response to minor events. Flamboyance and exaggeration were the tail feathers, the jaunty plumage that stretched and flared whenever a Wingo found himself eclipsed in the lampshine of a hostile world. As a family, we were instinctive, not thoughtful. We could never outsmart our adversaries but we could always surprise them with the imaginativeness of our reactions. We functioned best as connoisseurs of hazard and endangerment. We were not truly happy unless we were engaged in our own private war with the rest of the world. Even in my sister's poems, one could always feel the tension of approaching risk. Her poems all sounded as though she had composed them of thin ice and falling rock. They possessed movement, weight, dazzle and craft. Her poetry moved through streams of time, wild and rambunctious, like an old man entering the boundary waters of the Savannah River, planning to water-ski forty miles to prove he was still a man. — Pat Conroy

And then there is the black cat. Who has no other name than the Black Cat and who turned up almost a month ago. We did not realize he was going to be living here at first: he looked too well fed to be a stray, too old and jaunty to have been abandoned. He looked like a small panther, and he moved like a patch of night.

One day, in the summer, he was lurking about our ramshackle porch: eight or nine years old, at a guess, male, greenish-yellow of eye, very friendly, quite unperturbable. I assumed he belonged to a neighboring farmer or household.

I went away for a few weeks, to finish writing a book, and when I came home he was still on our porch, living in an old cat ben one of the children had found for him. He was, however, almost unrecognizable. Patches of fur had gone, and there were deep scratches on his gray skin. The tip of one ear was chewed away. There was a gash beneath one eye, s lice gone from one lip. He looked tired and thin. — Neil Gaiman

The only thing more pleasing than seeing Ronan singled out was seeing him singled out and forced to repeatedly sing an Irish jig. "Piss up a rope," Ronan said. Gansey, unoffended, waited. Ronan shook his head, but then, with a wicked smile, he began to sing, "Squash one, squash two, s - " "Not that one," both Adam and Gansey said. "I'm not listening to that for three hours," Adam said. Gansey pointed at Ronan until he began to breathily whistle a jaunty reel. — Maggie Stiefvater

They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing. — Cormac McCarthy

What is wrong with you?" I whispered furiously.
"Nothing," he said, surprised. "I feel great."
"But how can you be so ... so jaunty?"
"Jaunty? I've never been jaunty. I hope never to be jaunty. — Leigh Bardugo

Bunny slippers remind me of who I am.You can't get a swelled head if you wear bunny slippers. You can't lose your sense of perspective and start acting like a star or a rich lady if you keep on wearing bunny slippers. Besides, bunny slippers give me confidence because they're so jaunty. They make a statement; they say, 'Nothing the world does to me can ever get me so far down that I can't be silly and frivolous. — Dean Koontz

Abandon a dachshund and upon your return, you may well be confronted with a small token of her displeasure. This, for the dachshund, is an undignified but necessary form of training. Eventually, you will learn your lesson, which is to take you with her everywhere. When you have finally accepted this, you will be generously rewarded for your good behavior by a jaunty, joyful companion. — Mary Doria Russell

The moon is weird tonight. A yellow devil with a knowing face and hard triumphant eyes. The top of his head is cropped off diagonally, as though he is wearing an invisible hat at a jaunty angle. Usually when I see the moon I feel like I've been blessed, but not tonight. The moon is telling me to watch my feet.
pg. 50 — Kirsty Eagar

She smiled, nodded, and kept walking. She waved her badge at the proximity sensor, stepped into the revolving door, and entered the cavernous atrium. Right in the center, surrounded by tropical foliage, was a huge bronze globe, the continents sculpted in sharp relief. On the front of the globe, set at a jaunty angle, was the Gifford Industries logo, which couldn't have been more hokey: retro squared-off streamlined script that must have looked futuristic when it was designed in the 1930s. A couple more people waved at her, flashed sympathetic looks, and she ducked into the express elevator to the twenty-fourth floor. She slid her security card into the slot, and the elevator rose. The lights in the executive suite were already on, which surprised her. She was normally the first one in. She passed her prox badge against the sensor until it beeped, then pushed open the glass doors. When she rounded the corner, she saw someone sitting at her desk. Noreen Purvis. 23. — Joseph Finder

In school I ended up writing three different papers on "The Castaway" section of Moby-Dick, the chapter where the cabin boy Pip falls overboard and is driven mad by the empty immensity of what he finds himself floating in. And when I teach school now I always teach Crane's horrific "The Open Boat," and get all bent out of shape when the kids find the story dull or jaunty-adventurish: I want them to feel the same marrow-level dread of the oceanic I've always felt, the intuition of the sea as primordial nada, bottomless, depths inhabited by cackling tooth-studded things rising toward you at the rate a feather falls. — David Foster Wallace