agility

See Also: MOVEMENT, SPEED, TURNING AND TWISTING, WALKING

1. (A small, shrivelled old man … ) agile and quick like one of those whiskered little monkeys at the Zoo —Aldous Huxley
2. Agile as a fish —William Humphrey
3. Agile as a monkey —Alexandre Dumas, père
4. Agile as squirrels —Luigi Pirandello
5. (Moved) as lightly as a bubble —Hans Christian Andersen
6. As nimble as a cow in a cage —Thomas Fuller
7. Deft as spiders’ catenation —C. S. Lewis
8. Frisky and graceful as young lambs at play —George Garrett
9. Graceful as joy —Babette Deutsch
10. Graceful as a panther —Raymond Chandler
11. Graceful as a premire danseuse —Natascha Wodin
12. Graceful as a Stillson wrench —Diane Wakoski
13. Graceful as the swallow’s flight —Julian Grenfell
14. Graceful figure … which was as tough as hickory and as flexible as a whip —Thomas Wolfe
15. He could leap like a grasshopper and melt into the tree-tops like a monkey —G. K. Chesterton
16. Light-footed as a dancer waiting in the wings —Vita Sackville-West
17. (Her tiny body as) limber as a grass —Jean Stafford
18. Lithe as a swan —Richard Ford
19. Lithe as a whip —Raymond Chandler
20. Nimble as a cat —Anon

    Herman Melville used this to begin chapter 68 of Moby Dick but it probably dates back well before that.

21. Nimble as a deer —Geoffrey Chaucer
22. Quick as a wrestler —Edward Hoagland
23. Sprang [out of his bed] like a mastiff —T. Coraghessan Boyle
24. Springy as a trampoline —Marge Piercy
25. Spry as a yearling —Eugene O’Neill
26. Step as elastic as a cat’s —Jo Bannister
27. Supple as a cat —Irwin Shaw

    This is a variation of the often used “Agile as a cat” and “Agile as a cat, and just as sly.”

28. Supple as a red fox —Maxine Kumin
29. Swift and light as a wild cat —D. H. Lawrence
30. There was something breath-taking in the grace of his big body which made his very entrance into a room like an abrupt physical impact —Margaret Mitchell

    Mitchell is describing Rhett Buttler, the hero of her epic Gone With the Wind.