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More "Softness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chided—and this time the epithet had lost its alluring softness. "You may as well tell me. Mr. Raymer had borrowed money at poppa's bank. What was the matter? Did he have to pay ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... that year, and on its first evening of real softness and beauty the houses of Littleton seemed turned wrong-side-out, like a stocking-bag, upon the streets. Every door-step had its occupants, every fence rail its leaning groups (though fences were scarce in Littleton), and the left-overs gathered in and ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... for the prisoner's dole. That was the simplicity of asking that the moon and the sun still rise. Give beauty to women, and grace to children, and songs for poets to sing. Let not the green tree wither, but send it rain. And give a little softness to the hearts of callous men. And remind us that widows live, and that there are fatherless. Teach us how to heal sickly children, and be easy on horses. And give us gentleness. And when roses grow on the walls in June, put ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... sensible man, that he would stay at home and nurse himself over the fire that day, instead of going to the office. So he turned over and snoozed for an hour or two, luxuriating in a sense of aches and pains just pronounced enough to make the warmth and softness of the ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... the biter is pretty well bitten. There was a poor Chilian once who was deceived in this way, and paid four hundred dollars for a claim that was scarcely worth working. He looked rather put out on discovering the imposture, but was only laughed at by most of those who saw the transaction for his softness. Some there were who frowned on the sharper, and even spoke of lynching him, but they were a small minority, and had to hold their peace. However, the Chilian plucked up heart, and, leaping into his claim, worked away like a Trojan. After a day or two he hit upon a good layer of blue clay, and ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... touch. In the face of the girl who works, whether she be a spindle-legged errand-girl or a ten-thousand-a-year foreign buyer, you will find both vivacity and depth of expression. What she loses in softness and bloom she gains in a something that peeps from her eyes, that lurks in the corners of her mouth. Emma never tired of studying them—these girls with their firm, slim throats, their lovely faces, their Oriental eyes, and their conscious grace. ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... and to estimate the amount of strength that remains and that will be available for the repair of the diseased tissues. A good condition of nutrition is shown by the rotundity of the body, the pliability and softness of the skin, and the tone of the hair. If the subcutaneous fat has disappeared and the muscles are wasted, allowing the bony prominences to stand out; if the skin is tight and inelastic and the coat dry and harsh, we have evidence ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... there were but few gentlemen, and then motioned her to sing. The little one looked timidly up. Her cheek was of olive darkness, but a flush rested there, and out of the thinnest face, under the arch of broad temples, deepened by masses of the blackest hair looked two eyes whose softness and tender pleading would have ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... conversation with Louisa, she thought she was out of all other hearing. Hilda's voice was very clear and penetrating, but not loud. George Cannon's voice in public places such as the staircase had an almost caressing softness. The Watchetts cooed like faint doves, thereby expressing the delicate refinement of their virginal natures. The cook's voice was unknown beyond the kitchen. And nobody was more grimly self-controlled in speech than Sarah Gailey ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... thought himself in a miserable country, where even the nobles (los mismos caballeros) followed the plough. The Chayma women are not handsome, according to the ideas we annex to beauty; yet the young girls have a look of softness and melancholy, contrasting agreeably with the expression of the mouth, which is somewhat harsh and wild. They wear their hair plaited in two long tresses; they do not paint their skin; and wear no other ornaments than necklaces and bracelets made of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... presence of the woman he loved the best in the world—May Webster. She was dressed in black, and sank upon her knees by Sally's side. The intense sympathy of her expression made her look more beautiful than ever, giving the touch of softness that her features sometimes lacked. Throughout the service the rector's brave, strong voice never faltered, and it rose and fell with the others in Psalm and hymn. He seemed, for the time being, borne aloft upon the wings of faith and love; but when, the service ended, Paul made his way back ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... unornamented, but those of the better classes are always ornamented with a belt of red ochre outside. There are no large boulders in the river here, although it runs with violence. This is owing to the softness ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... of the Cares of Life in general, alleviates the Concerns of Man; what an invaluable Blessing must that Lady prove, to the Softness of whose Sex Nature hath conjoined an Aptitude for Council, an Application, Zeal, and Dispatch but too rarely found ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... somewhat the same light that Henriette had viewed it. Mon Dieu! since it was that young man, that Frenchman who had fought so bravely, was it not her duty to forgive, even as she had forgiven once before, in Captain Beaudoin's case? A look of greater softness rose to her eyes; she averted her head. Her son might go; Edmond would be there to protect Gilberte against the Prussian. She even smiled faintly, she whose grim face had never once relaxed since the news of the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Substantialized upon thy regal brow, Shouldst boast a deeper insight. We are born, It is my faith, in miniature completeness, And like each other only in our weakness. Even with our mother's milk upon our lips, Our smiles have different meanings, and our hands Press with degrees of softness to her bosom. It is not change—whatever in the heart That wears its semblance, we, in looking back, With gratulation or regret, perceive— It is not change we undergo, but only Growth or development. Yes! what is childhood But after all a sort of golden daylight, A beautiful ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... longer existed, and there were no more crinolines to create it artificially. An observer not under the charm of her face might have been excused for calling her fat and lumpy. The face, grave, kind, and expectant, with its radiant, fresh cheeks, and the rounded softness of its curves, atoned for the figure. She was ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... with—alas! the shade of a moustache; white teeth, a little too small; a commonplace nose, a slightly pug; and her mother's eyes—her best feature. She has the eyebrows of her Uncle Des Rameures, which gives an air of severity to the face and neutralizes the good-natured expression-a reflex from the softness ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... said Betty. "More likely she has some additional injury; possibly a blow on some other part of her head. Girls, did you ever see such glorious hair!" Betty caressed it. Truly there was a mass of it, and it was of beautiful silkness and softness. It was still partly bound up, but the autoists could easily tell that it must reach almost to the ground when the girl ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... a little boy, then, never brought to a sense of his unimportance by being physically, if not morally, kicked? Is he to pass his life in a condition of Sybaritic softness?" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... was very plain. She had that rare beauty—a soft eye. I do not mean the grace of insipidity, nor the quality of mere form and colour; but the full lustrous softness that speaks a character strong in the foundations of peace and sweetness. Many an eye can be soft by turns and upon occasion; it is rarely that you see one where sweetness and strength have met together to make that the abiding characteristic. The gentleness of such an eye has ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... forms a softer man; Picks from each sex, to make the favourite blest, Your love of pleasure or desire of rest: Blends, in exception to all general rules, Your taste of follies, with our scorn of fools: Reserve with frankness, art with truth allied, Courage with softness, modesty with pride; Fix'd principles, with fancy ever new; Shakes all ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... to echo through the house, the girl had slipped off her shoes; and drawing her gown loosely over her head, and muffling her arms in it, stood at the door, listening with breathless interest. The moment the noise ceased, she glided from the room; ascended the stairs with incredible softness and silence; and was lost ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... drawing attention to the curve of the nostril, the gold ornament in the centre of the forehead studded with tallow-drop emeralds and flawed rubies, the heavy circlet of beaten gold that was fastened round her neck by the softness of the pure metal, and the chinking curb-patterned silver anklets hanging low over the rosy ankle-bone. She was dressed in jade-green muslin as befitted a daughter of the Faith, and from shoulder to elbow ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... accountant, and is allowed no important place in the exchequer. But the treasures are given in charge to a virtue of which we hear too little in modern times, as distinct from others; Magnanimity: largeness of heart: not softness or weakness of heart, mind you—but capacity of heart—the great measuring virtue, which weighs in heavenly balances all that may be given, and all that may be gained; and sees how to do noblest things in noblest ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... say which of the two sisters, was it left to my choice, would be my companion, as both are superlatively pleasing.—They possess, to a degree, what I so much admire in our sex;—a peculiar softness in the voice and manner; yet not quite so sprightly, perhaps, as may be thought necessary for some misses started up in this age; but sufficient, I think, for those who keep within certain bounds.—It requires an uncommon share of understanding, join'd with a great ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... there some charred and blackened giant rears two bare arms aloft, and seems to curse his enemies. The prettiest sight I have seen was yesterday, when we—on the heights of the mountain, and in a keen wind—looked down into a valley full of light and softness; catching glimpses of scattered cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark; pigs scampering home, like so many prodigal sons; families sitting out in their gardens; cows gazing upward, with a stupid indifference; men in their ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... what, in physical geography, would be called maritime. "Here are allied the continental vigor and oceanic softness, in a fortunate union, mutually tempering each other."[22] The climate of the whole peninsula of Greece seems to be distinguished from that of Spain and Italy, by having more of the character of an inland region. The diversity of local temperature ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... a tone of great softness, "your wife is a good woman. God bless her! God bless her for all she has said and done—would have done, if that villain had let her! Do you know the poor thing hasn't a single friend in the world, not one, one—except ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spell, and was startled to hear the clock strike eleven as he descended the stairs to breakfast. He was vexed at the lateness of the hour, for he had meant to have taken advantage of the unwonted softness of Egerton, and drawn therefrom some promises or proffers to cheer the prospects which the minister had so chillingly expanded before him the preceding night. And it was only at breakfast that he usually found the opportunity of private conference with his busy patron. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... could see that they had a sort of homespun linen garment underneath. The female part of the family were dressed in clothes, part of which were of the same homespun, and part of a fine skin, that of the fawn, dressed to the softness of a glove. Several hats were lying about; and we noticed that they were curiously fabricated from ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... opposition from his crew, whose mutinies he repressed, partly by softness, and partly by steadiness, sailed on till he reached the utmost point of Africa, which from the bad weather that he met there, he called cabo Tormentoso, or the cape of Storms. He would have gone forward, but his crew forced ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... precisely the same fish. Certainly the mud of the Altamaha must have some most peculiar virtues; and, by the by, I have never anywhere tasted such delicious tea as that which we make with this same turbid stream, the water of which duly filtered, of course, has some peculiar softness which affects the tea (and it is the same we always use) in a most curious ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... sweetness on the face of a lovely woman, or in the smile of a friend, is recognised by the man whose inner senses have even a little—a mere stirring of—vitality. To the one who has lifted the golden latch the spring of sweet waters, the fountain itself whence all softness arises, is opened and becomes part of ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... ray disappeared on the horizon, a gauze-like veil of pale lilac fell over the world. But as every moment decreased the transparency of this tropical twilight, the tint gradually lost its softness and became darker and darker. It looked as if an invisible painter, unceasingly moving his gigantic brush, swiftly laid one coat of paint over the other, ever changing the exquisite background of our islet. The phosphoric candles of the fireflies began ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... laughed when she saw how brown their little bodies were, rejoicing in blushing quietude at her own whiteness, but to-day she neither laughed nor felt any joy, rather a dim wonder. She sat down, dress and all, in the thick softness of a great brown ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... unsteady,—disposed to droop, and wander, as though ashamed to express the emotions which agitated his soul. Altogether, his features were classic; but there was something about them which the moralist would not like—a sort of lascivious softness mingling with the nobler intellectual expression, that warned him to beware of the Siren, ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... arm through hers. He felt against his wrist the warm softness of her travelling-coat, and it seemed to him that, though the girl made no sign, some slight answering pressure met his touch. So they leaned upon the rail for a space watching the water fall hissing from the vessel's ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... expectations which we had been led to form. They are but eight in number, and do not comprehend the finest of his compositions. Their general character is that of tenderness and delicacy: there is a softness in his shading of the human form which is quite unrivalled, and a harmony in the general tone of his colouring, which is in perfect unison with the characteristic expression which it was his object to produce. You feel a want of unity, however, in the composition of his figures; you dwell rather ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... glowered, but, with all that, had something in his face which hinted softness. The dialogue did not continue much longer; it ended with a promise from Mrs. Bowles to let her father know whether her husband succeeded or not in re-establishing himself. Thereupon they shook hands without a word, and Mr. Lott left the house. He returned to the ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... followed their footsteps across the stretch of moonlit open. Then, by and by, he also was in the shadow of the pines. Here, not a sound broke the midnight hush. His feet made no noise upon the resinous softness of the ground below. In that dead, pulseless silence he could distinctly hear the distant voices of Levi and his companion, sounding loud and resonant in the hollow of the woods. Beyond the woods was a cornfield, and presently he heard ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... sorry, mon ami," the woman said, hesitating after she had left her chair before the fire; whose play of broken light was, perhaps, responsible for some of the softness of her eyes as she faced Duchemin and gave him her hand—"sorry our last evening together must be so brief. I am in the mood to sit and talk with you for ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... his fix. Because, being such a wintry fashion of female, she made all others of the sex shine by contrast, and her father guessed it was just her manly, hard, bustling way that showed up the feminine softness and charming voice and general appealing qualities of ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... and smoking. She was rumpled and muddy, with flying hair and thick walking shoes and the air of bustle and vigor which had crept into her blood this last month. Truly, her cheeks were glowing and her eyes bright, but he disapproved. Softness and daintiness, silk and lace and glimmering flesh, belonged to women in his mind, and he despised Amazons and "business" women. He received her kiss coldly, and Mary's heart sank. She essayed some gay greeting, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... food, and he found it tough but savory. Hunger would have given a sufficient sauce to anything and as he ate in a sort of luxurious content he studied his captors with the advantage of the daylight. The full sunshine disclosed no more of softness and mercy than the night had shown. The features were immobile, the eyes fixed and hard, but when the gaze of any one of them, even the chief, met the boy's it was quickly turned. There was about them something ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the grande dame; she is gray and distinguished, and wears handsome old brocades and brooches. Richmond is aquiline and crisp and has much "manner." But though Charleston is actually the older, the wonderful beauty of the place, the softness of the ancient architectural lines, the sweet scents wafting from walled gardens, the warmth of color everywhere, gives the place that very quality of immortal youth and loveliness which is so rare in cities, and is ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... through all of which we sped ruthlessly. The banks still flat, until the last part of the trip, when we approached some hills on the left, not very lofty, but clearly defined, and with a kind of dreamy softness about them, which reminded one of Egypt. Altogether, it was impossible to have had anything more charming in the way of yachting; the waters a perfect calm, or hardly crisped by the breeze that played on their surface. We rather wish for more wind, as the 'Cruiser' cannot keep ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... wish you to go home with them, Camille," said the Mother Superior, in the language of the convent. Her voice was kind and gentle apparently; but the child, accustomed to its various inflections, detected a steely ring behind its softness, like the proverbial iron hand ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... house-cricket, resides altogether within our dwellings, intruding itself upon our notice whether we will or no. This species delights in new-built houses, being, like the spider, pleased with the moisture of the walls; and besides, the softness of the mortar enables them to burrow and mine between the joints of the bricks or stones, and to open communications from one room to another. They are particularly fond of kitchens and bakers' ovens, on account of ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... Rebecca," said Copernicus, with deprecating softness. "Here, give me holt o' yer hand while we climb over the wall. Here's Burnham's swamp ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... numbered thousands and strong men of both parties wept and gnashed their teeth in their frantic craving to wreak vengeance on the orator for the insults offered to their mothers, wives, daughters, and sweethearts. Indignant women, forgetting the softness of sex, had arisen in just wrath to execute this brazen-faced apostle of mammon. Half a column was devoted to the mystery of the Judge's disappearance from the scene and it was stated that he was believed to have terrorized a boy into ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... many varieties are grown, principally those known as flint and bastard flint. The gourd-seed varieties are very objectionable in that climate, principally on account of their softness rendering them unfit for bread, and open to the attacks of insects in the field and the crib. They require a grain, white, hard, and rather flinty—white because of its great consumption in bread and hommony, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... misgiving on account of its delicious softness and warmth; but that passed. It was the right skin(10), and a mark that Heaven approved his ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... point," she argued warmly. "Dogs are not eaten in California. Why not leave him here? He is happy. He'll never want for food—you know that. He'll never suffer from cold and hardship. Here all is softness and gentleness. Neither the human nor nature is savage. He will never know a whip-lash again. And as for the weather—why, it never ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... more frequently than others, and the decoration of religious edifices was the chief employment of the artists; but they worked with more independence of thought and spirit. The painters studied more from nature, and though the change was very slow, it is still true that a certain softness of effect, an easy flow of drapery, and a new grace of pose did appear, and about A.D. 1350 a new idea of the uses and aims ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... building, is very amply compensated by the kindness of nature in the remarkable softness of the rocks, which encompass the sea coast, as well as those in the interior parts of the country: they are a soft, crumbly, sandy stone; those parts, which are most exposed to, and receive the most severity of the weather, are generally harder than such parts as are less ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... of a jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would not have been less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you cast the whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly over the thickness of Mary's legs and the softness of Kitty's cheeks, and the blonde fluffiness of Wickham's whiskers, you would have left a romance still ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... finished, had been abundant: "the grapes," says Guibert of Nogent, "were still hanging on the branches of the vines; on all sides discoveries were made of grain shut up, not in barns, but in subterranean vaults; and the trees were laden with fruit." These facilities of existence, the softness of the climate, the pleasantness of the places, the frequency of leisure, partly pleasure and partly care-for-nothingness, caused amongst the crusaders irregularity, license, indiscipline, carelessness, and often perils and reverses. The Turks profited thereby to make ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... will bear witness to Ruth. I have hated her—so keenly, may God forgive me! but you may know, from that, that my witness is true. I have hated her, and my hatred was only quenched into contempt—not contempt now, dear Ruth—dear Ruth"—(this was spoken with infinite softness and tenderness, and in spite of her father's fierce eyes and passionate gesture)—"I heard what you have learnt now, father, weeks and weeks ago—a year it may be, all time of late has been so long; and I shuddered up from her and from her sin; and I might have spoken ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Church; but inclining rather to secular and military things, or his prospects of promotion altering, he early quitted that; and took vigorously to the career of arms and business. A truculent-looking Herr, with thoughtful eyes, and hanging under-lip:—HAT of enviable softness; loose disk of felt flung carelessly on, almost like a nightcap artificially extended, so admirably soft;—and the look of the man Casimir, between his cataract of black beard and this semi-nightcap, is carelessly truculent. He had much fighting with the Nurnbergers and others; laid it right ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... World, was invited by the Spanish ambassador to take part in an expedition against the encroaching French. "They can do no harm at Baccalaos," was the cold reply; "and so," adds the indignant ambassador, "this King would say if they should come and take him here at Lisbon; such is the softness they show here on the one hand, while, on the other, they wish to give ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Assignare; postea assignare; ensuita assignare. The word is a trifle altered. The Latin of your present doctors may be better than that of your old comedy; their wisdom and the variety of their resources are the same. They have not more notes in their song than the cuckoo; though, far from the softness of that harbinger of summer and plenty, their voice is as harsh and as ominous as ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... determination of a Theomachist. Eyes and forehead both would have expressed keenness of intellect too severely to be pleasing, had their force not been counteracted by the lines and tone of the lips. These were full and luscious to a surprising degree, possessing a woman-like softness of curve, and a ruby redness so intense, as to testify strongly to much susceptibility of heart where feminine beauty was concerned—a susceptibility that might require all the ballast of brain with which he had previously been credited to confine ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... as sleeping water. As some rich weed that the warm sea holds and swings, as some fair cloud lingers in radiant atmosphere, her hair floated, every parted tress an impalpable film of gold in the crude sunlight of the ray turned upon her; and when she danced towards the footlights, the bright softness of the threads clung almost amorously about her white wrists—faint cobwebs hanging from white flowers were not more faint, fair, and soft; wonderful was the hair of this dancing girl, suggesting all fabled enchantments, all visions of delicate perfume ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Solon himself,—although the one desired to effect by the authority of the chief, the order and the energy which the other would have trusted to the development of the people. But, masking his more interested designs, Pisistratus outbid all competition in his seeming zeal for the public welfare. The softness of his manners—his profuse liberality—his generosity even to his foes—the splendid qualities which induced Cicero to compare him to Julius Cesar [226], charmed the imagination of the multitude, and concealed ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... how this caudle was made, and in fact concocted some for me to taste. It is a light mixture of broth, milk, wine (which is in the largest quantity), one or two yolks of eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and a few cloves. It is white; has a very strong taste, not unmixed with softness. I should not like to take it habitually, nevertheless it is not disagreeable. You put in it, if you like, crusts of bread, or, at times, toast, and then it becomes a species of soup; otherwise it is drunk as broth; and, ordinarily, it was in this last fashion the King took it. It is unctuous, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... showing him the score of his Feldlager in Schlesien, I decided to attach no great importance to the instructions he might have received, but rather to help myself by a careful handling of this difficult score, and by introducing some softness into it through modulating the variations in tone as much as possible. I had the gratification later of receiving an exceedingly warm appreciation of my rendering from Herr Eduard Devrient, a great Gluck connoisseur. After hearing this opera as presented ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... step, and dove-like trembling eye? Thou, as from heav'n, that couldst each grace dispense, Fancy's rich stream, and all the stores of sense; Give to each virtue face and form divine, Make dulness feel, and vulgar souls refine, Wake all the passions into restless life, Now calm to softness, and now rouze ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... inequalities of the surface over which the oxen had to be driven, that brought the grain home on the enormous plaustra of the husbandman, was the first idea of a street, whose very name is derived from stratum, levelled. As experience advanced, steps would be taken to prevent the softness of the road from interrupting the draught. A narrow rim of stone, just wide enough to sustain the wheel, would, in all probability, be the next improvement; and only when the gentle operations of the farm were exchanged for war, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... penalty. If a woman be celebrated, the world always thinks she must be wicked. If she's wise, she laughs. It is the bitter that you must take with the sweet, as you get the sorrel flavour with the softness of the cream, in your soup a la Bonne Femme. But the cream would clog without it, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... in answer to her importunities, only regretted his want of power to aid her. In vain had she attempted, by the offer of some remaining jewels, to secure the co-operation of her guards, with whom her loveliness and the softness of her manners had already ingratiated her. She had not succeeded even in communicating with Alroy. But after the unsuccessful mission of Honain to the dungeon, the late Vizier visited the sister ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... it; you will be with me, in dreamy grottoes strewn with fragrant rushes and the new-stript leaves of the vine, where the warm air woos to repose with its languorous softness, and the water as it wells murmurs its liquid laughter. Ah! no Greek would have ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... plenteous Table's spread, At which each living Creature's fed; Who gave the Breath of Life, and whence This fine Variety of Sense; Whose Hands unfold the azure sky, Sublimely pleasing to the Eye; Who tun'd the feather'd Songster's throat, Giving such softness to his note, To fill the Ear with dulcet sound, And pour sweet Music all around; Who on the teeming Branches plac'd Such various Fruit to please the Taste; What bounteous Hand perfum'd the Rose, And ev'ry scented Flow'r that blows, ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... drew the conclusion that he was not willing to resemble such a fellow, and was more and more persuaded that there was tenderness in the way he pressed her waist, and that his voice had the softness of a caress when he spoke to her. He made many inquiries as to what she liked and what she wished for in the future, as if his great object in all things was to anticipate her wishes. As for his intimacy with Madame de Villegry, Jacqueline thought nothing of it, notwithstanding her habitual mistrust ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... satisfaction, prognosticated that now there would be regret that Louis's schemes had been neglected or sneered at, and when too late, his father might feel as much sorrow as he had time for. It was the bitterness, not the softness of grief, in which he looked forth into the dull blue east-windy haze deepening in the twilight, and presently beheld something dark moving along under the orchard bank beneath. 'Hollo! who's there?' he exclaimed, and the form, rearing itself, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was still so far under the dominion of Dicky's champagne that he started violently. Double doors and double carpets deadened all sound of coming and going, and the voice seemed to have got into the room by itself. As from its softness he judged it to be still some yards distant, he suffered a further shock on finding a ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... tickled her shoulders through her linsey dress, and pictured her, grotesquely foreshortened, upon the nail-drawn, warped, and beaten floor. Her hands, nursing her cheeks, chin pivoted in their palms, were large and toil-distorted, great-jointed like a man's, and all the feminine softness with which nature had endowed her seemed to have been overcome by the masculine cast of frame and face which the hardships of her life ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Remorse and softness were past; he was the Indian again. "I am going to wreck that hell-annex some day, and that some day will be the next time I start in. Don't argue with me, don't misunderstand me. To-day you stopped me. I don't know whether you meant what you threatened; I don't care now. It is just as ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... substitutes for the potato; practically, too, we can find quite satisfactory alternatives for it in our conventional bills of fare. On the face of things the potato is a bland mealy food which blends well with the high flavor and the firm texture of meat and the softness of many other cooked vegetables. Gastronomically, rice or hominy comes about as near to having the same qualities, with hot bread, macaroni, sweet potatoes, and baked bananas (underripe so as not to be too juicy and sweet) close rivals. These are not so easy to cook and serve ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... painter, is attributed great softness and harmony, and even majesty, though, like Fra Angelico, he was often deficient in strength. He was great in the management of draperies, for the better study of which he is said to have invented the ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... their characters of line. Here in this leaf are boundaries intermittent, boundaries rugged, boundaries curved, and boundaries broken. Nor do shape and definition ever begin to exhaust the list. For there are softness and hardness too: the agreement and disagreement with the scheme of veins; the grotesque and the simple in line; the sharp and the broad, the smooth, and raised in boundaries. So in this one matter of boundaries might ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... soon as Mrs. Willoughby, however, interposed, the gleam of ferocity that passed so naturally and readily athwart the swarthy features of the savage, melted into a look of gentleness, and there were moments when it might be almost termed softness. ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... is—unmistakable. There was always a purring softness in it. He used to remind me at school of a sleek, complacent cat, and I hate cats ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... few birds and small animals for the chief's daughter, who was as delighted with her increasing "museum" as any child could have been. Now, in her unfeigned glee over the prospect of a new specimen, Lindela looked extremely attractive; and noting it, an unconscious softness had crept into the man's tone. Even the girls behind noticed it, and whispered to each ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... of her wifely arts of diversion would prove when he once fell into this train of black thoughts; but she could not refrain from essaying the hopeless task by holding up her apron of homespun cloth full of cotton rolls, pretty in their whiteness and roundness and softness, meantime coquettishly turning her still girlish head on one side, and saying: "Now, Mr. Browne, why don't you praise my cotton? Did you ever see ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... come into her hands an orphan in her infancy. There had been real and entire devotion to each other on the part of the aunt and niece; and the affection she had been able to inspire, together with the solemn feelings towards the newly dead, gave her memory a softness that almost enabled Violet to think of her in Lady Martindale's point of view, forget her harshness, and the worldly pride for her niece and her family, to which she had sacrificed their ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... step. Then he shut the door with an accentuated softness, and came to the table where he had sat with Rudyard. Mechanically she took the seat which Rudyard had occupied, and looked at him across the table with a dread conviction stealing over her face, robbing it of every vestige of its heavenly ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... said:—'The French have more real politeness, and the English the better method of expressing it. By real politeness I mean softness of temper, and a sincere inclination to oblige and be serviceable, which is very conspicuous in this nation, not only among the high, but low; in so much that the porters and coachmen here are civil, and that, not only to gentlemen, but likewise among themselves.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... loudly is greatly to be deprecated, leading as it does to undue strain, to coarseness of the voice, and to utter inability to modulate it into softness and purity of tone. Anyone can shout and bawl, but not every one can sing softly—therefore always practise softly until the voice be well formed, when it will be easy to increase the volume of sound. Constant shouting causes the muscles of the larynx to lose their contractile power, ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... dwelleth music; the sweetness of honey floweth from her lips; humility is like a crown of glory about her head; her eye speaketh softness and love; her husband putteth his heart in her bosom and ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... of her recent stormy mood, Nature seemed full of regretful relentings on Monday, and, as if to make amends for her harshness, assumed something of a summer softness. The sun had not the glaring brightness that dazzles, and the atmosphere, purified by the recent rain, revealed through its crystal depths objects with ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... bringing even the middle-aged man of business to her feet. The air is also influenced by her wooing, and is inclined to be less severe than some hours earlier. Floods of light are radiating King Square, giving even to its leafless trees a charm of softness and effect. Pedestrians are going to and fro, while several halt in the vicinity of the fountain to smoke their pipes and discuss the news of the day. Presently a quick step is heard approaching, and a trim little figure ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... was sick and faint from the pain of having her arm set. She lay in the deep sofa, covered with red damask, amid a bewildering softness of cushions and rugs, and wondered what Lady Anne was saying to Mamie. Mamie was Mrs. Gray. From the first Mary had not called her Mother. Her name was Matilda, and Mamie ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... on what happens; but he must have sense to distinguish the best. He will be kind to little, unwilful, undesigned failings: but he must have judgment to distinguish what are or are not so. But Mr. H.'s good-humour is softness, as I may call it; and my husband must be such an one, in short, as I need not be ashamed to be seen with in company; one who, being my head, must not be beneath all the gentlemen he may happen to fall in with, and who, every time he is adjusting his mouth for speech, will give ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... up at my mother, half resolved. She was leaning forward a little and gazing into the fire, that lit up her pale face and wonderful eyes with a sympathetic softness. I can remember now how sweet she looked and how weary—that tender figure outlined in warm glow against the stern, dark room. And all the time her heart was slowly breaking with yearning for him that came not. I did not know it then; but when does childhood know or understand ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... broken cry fell on unheeding ears. The coarse nature of the officer had long ago lost whatever elements of softness there might have been to develop in a gentler occupation. As for the owner of the store, he was not sufficiently sensitive to feel the verity in the accents of the speaker. Moreover, he was a man who followed the conventional, with never a distraction due to imagination and sympathy. Just ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... stood up, dimly-seen, shadowy grey and strange, the more distant dying out in the gathering gloom. Now it was as if a sudden return of the golden sunset had thrown them up again, glowing with light and colour, but with a softness and delicacy that was beautiful ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... he (again, and with warmth,) "It cannot be that you are so cruel! Softness itself is painted in your eyes.-You could not, surely, have the barbarity so wantonly to ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... that night. Robert stayed to dinner. Will chanced to be absent and there were only the three of us at table. There was a mellow sort of stillness. A softness of voice possessed us all, even when we asked for bread or salt. Our conversation was trivial, unimportant, but kind and gentle. Between Ruth and Robert there glowed adoration for each other, which words and commonplaces ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... resembled the moon shining bright, and the blackness of his locks was as the murky night; and his waist was more slender than the gossamer[FN231] and his back parts than two sand heaps bulkier, making a Babel of the heart with their softness; but his waist complained of the weight of his hips and loins; and his charms ravished all mankind, even as one of the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... excavation, with a partially concealed entrance, the exquisite structure is placed. Horse and cow hair are plentifully used, imparting to the interior of the nest great symmetry and firmness as well as softness. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... very strangely and quite completely her embarrassment vanished. She found herself shaking hands with a large, kindly man, who looked at her with deep-set, friendly eyes and asked her in a voice of marvellous softness ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... her dear speech with me. I had stayed up, in my study, reading; and must have dozed over the book. Suddenly, I awoke and sat upright, with a start. For a moment, I looked 'round, with a puzzled sense of something unusual. There was a misty look about the room, giving a curious softness to each table ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... a small vehicle with a narrow seat, and they were compelled to sit so close together that he felt the softness and warmth of her body. He was compelled, too, to confess that Mrs. Markham was as attractive by daylight as by lamplight. A fur jacket and a dark dress, both close-fitting, did not conceal the curves of her trim figure. Her cheeks were glowing red with the rapid motion and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... England it is constantly used for umbrella-sticks. The most interesting birds were the pigeons, with feathers of the richest metallic hues. The plaintive cooings of their notes as they issued from the solitude of the sombre woods, were mournful but soothing to my ear. Their air is full of softness, and their eyes of gentleness; the very turn of the neck and the carriage of the head are full of grace; every motion is elegant, and their forms of the most beautiful proportions. A kingfisher of considerable ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... sacrifice he had made of his heart to his duty. He had shut the woman he loved determinedly out of his thoughts, and had set his face resolutely to do his duty to the woman whom he seemed destined to marry. Even now a little softness, a little womanly gentleness and sympathy, and, above all, a wise forbearance from probing into his still open wounds, might have won a certain amount of gratitude and affection from him. But Helen was unequal to this. She only drove ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... they hide the nakedness of truth. Your fireplace is ugly, your mere necessary shelves and seats but planks and crudity, all your surroundings so much office furniture, until the skilful hand and the draperies come in. Then a few cunning loopings and foldings, and behold softness and delicacy, crudity gone, and life well worth the living. So that you cannot value ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... spectacle than this great council, which was convened to settle the creed of the Church. It met in a spacious basilica, where the emperor, arrayed in his purple and silk robes, with a diadem of precious jewels on his head, and a voice of gentleness and softness, and an air of supreme majesty, exhorted the assembled theologians to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... degree of latitude, the same sun which ripens the tamarind and the anana, ameliorates the temper, and disposes it to gentleness and kindness. In India and other countries not very different in climate from the southern parts of the United States, the inhabitants are distinguished for a softness and inoffensiveness of manners, degenerating almost to effeminacy; it is here then, only, that we are exempt from the general influence of climate: here only that, in spite of it, we are cruel ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... here, one who would ride in the train of the Percys must make a brave show. It is curfew, now; but tomorrow, early, we will sally into the town, where we shall find a good choice of garments, for men of all conditions. You hold yourself well, and you have something of your mother's softness of speech; and will, I think, make a good impression on Sir ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... Horns and claws, which are the weapons of some animals, and toughness of hide and quantity of hair or feathers, which are the clothing of animals, are signs of an abundance of the earthly element; which does not agree with the equability and softness of the human temperament. Therefore such things do not suit the nature of man. Instead of these, he has reason and hands whereby he can make himself arms and clothes, and other necessaries of life, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... small porch raised a step or two from the ground. The door was opened by a middle-aged Frenchwoman clad in a peasant's gown of bluish-grey. Behind her, holding a lamp a little above her head, stood a young girl, large, womanly in form, with dimpled softness of face, and dressed in a rich but quaint garment of amber colour. With raised and statuesque wrist she held the lamp aloft to keep the light from dazzling her eyes. She was looking through the doorway with the quiet interest of responsibility, nothing of which was ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... fine face, though too serious for so young a man. It was a complete oval, the hair growing back on the forehead, and the beard being dark and pointed, the complexion a clear pale brown, the eyes with something of Italian softness in them, rather than of French vivacity, the brows almost as if drawn with a pencil, the mouth very grave and thoughtful except when lighted by a smile of unusual sweetness. As a lawyer, his dress was of plain black with a little white collar fastened by two silken tassels (such ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Her sudden softness was touching. Heath had never been paid a compliment that had pleased him so much as hers. He had not expected it, and ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... led her to contrive it was abundantly justified whenever she still condescended to put it on, so startling a relief it lent to the curves of her slim figure, developed during the last two years of growth to all womanly roundness and softness, and to the dazzling colour of her dark head and thin face. As she sat by the fire, the white bundle on her knee, one pointed foot swinging in front of her, now hanging over the baby, and now turning her bright dangerous look and compressed lips ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... constantly shed her benign influence over the conduct of Miss Hoffman, nor could the insidious attempts of the infidel for a moment weaken her confidence in its heavenly doctrines. With a form rather slender and fragile was united a beauty of face, which, though not dazzling, had so much softness, such a touching sweetness in it, that the expression which mantled over her features was in a high degree lovely and interesting. Her countenance was indeed the faithful image of a mind that was purity itself, and of a heart where compassion and goodness had fixed their abode. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... simplicity and purity of feeling and design, the allegorical virtues perhaps still more expressive, and full of poetry in their symbols and attitudes; the whole series is executed with a delicacy of workmanship till then unknown in bronze, a precision yet softness of touch resembling that of a skillful performer on the pianoforte. Andrea was occupied upon it for nine years, from 1330 to 1339, and when finished, fixed in its place, and exposed to view, the public enthusiasm exceeded all bounds; the Signoria, with unexampled ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... brink. She lingered, and stuck to life like a beech leaf to the tree, which a child's breath might almost blow to the ground. But she had weathered the winter, and the days were stretching out again: it was almost the end of March, with bright sunshine and an occasional softness in the atmosphere that had a tinge of summer in it. As the doctor paid his afternoon visit the sun's beams streamed in at the little window, and hitting some of the tins hung on the wall for ornament, made a glory in the room which caused ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... they pass they will tread on herbs of sweet scent, and that the rough ground will be made smooth for them by depths of roses? So surely as they believe that, they will have, instead, to walk on bitter herbs and thorns; and the only softness to their feet will be of snow. But it is not thus intended they should believe; there is a better meaning in that old custom. The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them. "Her feet have touched the ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... floats out on either side of her head as she turns in the movement of the dance. The fragments of decoration which have survived help us to realize a very beautiful room, gay with colour, yet never garish because of the softness of the indirect illumination, in which we may imagine the Minoan Court ladies, in their modern gowns, reclining on the cushions of the long couch, discussing the incidents of the last bull-grappling entertainment, the skill of the young Athenian Theseus, and the obvious infatuation of ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... sea-green brocade, and felt its heavy texture and the softness of the fur trimming on the overdress, which at home she had called a masterpiece of Frau Lerch's work. She could be satisfied with her appearance, and the string of pearls on her neck and the bracelet which her lover ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which clear water sparkled temptingly. Rising from my chair, I took an antique silver goblet from the mantelpiece, filled it with the cool fluid, and was about to drink, when the cup was suddenly snatched from my hands, and the voice of Cellini, changed from its usual softness to a tone both imperious and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... said, "O king, know that Isfahand the Wazir is thine enemy, for that his soul liketh not that which thou hast done with him, and this message he hath sent thee is a trick; so rejoice thou not therein, neither be thou misled by the sweets of his say and the softness of his speech." The king hearkened to his Wazir's speech, but presently made light of the matter and busied himself with that which he was about of eating and drinking, pleasuring and merrymaking. Meanwhile, lsfahand the Wazir wrote a letter and sent it ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... corner, a little—you are right, it gives a softness, a vagueness, a—it is very funny, that little pot of blue. How ugly it must be! How things lead on one to another! Once one's hair is powdered, one must have a little pearl powder on one's face in order not to look as yellow as an orange; and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the interminable and unchanging surf—idle among spiritless idlers not perhaps dying, yet hardly living either, and aspiring, sometimes fiercely, after livelier weather and some vivifying change. These were certainly beautiful places to live in, and the climate was wooing in its softness. Yet there was a later shiver in the sunshine; you were not certain whether you were being wooed; and these mild shores would sometimes seem to you to be the shores of death. There was a lack of a manly element; the air was not reactive; you might write bits of poetry and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... master's face, and he saw a glitter in his eye. He remembered when they two were in trouble with a gang of river-drivers, and one did this same thing rudely: how Gaston looked down, and said, with a devilish softness: "Take it away." And immediately after the man ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... opinions from all sorts of men, and women too. Only there was one significant circumstance about her popularity—she could not win the love of children. No, not with all her beauty and grace of person, and sweetness and softness of tone and manner, she could not win the children. Their sensitive spirits shrank from the evil within her which the duller souls of adults could not even perceive. And many an innocent child was sent in disgrace from the parlor because it either would not kiss "sweet ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... gate and those hinges, carefully oiled, were in the habit of opening more frequently than was supposed. This softness was suspicious; it hinted at furtive goings and comings, silent entrances and exits of nocturnal men, and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... her own night-caps when she returned with the warming-pan, and Pierrette, who had never slept in anything but the coarsest linen sheets, was amazed at the fineness and softness of the cotton ones. When she was fairly in bed and tucked up, Adele, going downstairs with Sylvie, could not refrain from saying, "All she has ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... no yielding softness about this maiden of the morning hours, no conscious droop and a swift uplifting of penitent eyelids, no lingering glances out of love-weighted eyes. A brisk and practical little lady rather, her feet pattering most purposefully ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... laid her strong-minded head on the hard pillow, that I had had to have concocted out of bats of cotton for her, I laid my face against my own made of the soft breast feathers of a white flock of hovering hen-mothers and wept on their softness. ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... episcopal reminders of the blessings of war. "May it not be," wrote the Bishop of London soon after the outbreak of the war in 1914, "that this cup of hardship which we drink together will turn out to be the very draught which we need? Has there not crept a softness over the nation, a passion for amusement, a love of luxury among the rich, and of mere physical comfort among ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... pat and a kiss. "I guess I feel quite as much that way as you do, Miss Pat," she said with unusual softness. "I hadn't the wildest notion of bringing Mary Miller here. I'm going to take ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... chilled and repulsed. Look, now, at our own Kate Aubrey—nay, never fear to place her beside yon supercilious divinity—look at her, and your heart acknowledges her loveliness; your soul thrills at sight of her bewitching blue eyes—eyes now sparkling with excitement, then languishing with softness, in accordance with the varying emotions of a sensitive nature—a most susceptible heart. How her sunny curls harmonize with the delicacy and richness of her complexion! Her figure, observe, is, of the two, a trifle fuller than her rival's—stay, don't let your admiring eyes settle so intently ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... from ceiling to floor, before the deep bay-windows. Rosewood sofas and fauteuils, in costly coverings of the same soft color, rested on the brilliantly interwoven flowers of the Persian carpet, whose velvety softness echoed not the slightest tread. A fairy chandelier hung suspended from the lofty, corniced ceiling. Rare statuary decorated the mantel. Large mirrors and pictures in broad gilt frames adorned the walls. Marble stands, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... reasons for existence of those instruments of wires and jacks and quills which its metallic rumble has been supposed so entirely to have superseded. As for the clavichord, to have once touched it, feeling the softness with which one's fingers make their own music, like wind among the reeds, is to have lost something of one's relish even for the music of the violin, which is also a windy music, but the music of wind blowing sharply among the trees. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... herself in fine linen, decketh herself with jewels, anointeth her hair and maketh her eyes lovely with kohl, and lo! when she would picture herself she setteth her shoulders awry and slighteth the grace of her joints and the softness of her flesh. O, that thy brave spirit had arisen long ago, ere the perversion had become a heritage, dear to the Egyptian sculptor as his bones! But now, artist though he be, his eye is so befilmed by ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... for an unforeseen misfortune. In passing a gigantic cypress his horse stumbled upon its projecting roots, and came head foremost to the ground—flinging his rider out of the saddle with such force that, but for the softness of the spot on which he fell, some of his bones would undoubtedly have ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... claws, which are the weapons of some animals, and toughness of hide and quantity of hair or feathers, which are the clothing of animals, are signs of an abundance of the earthly element; which does not agree with the equability and softness of the human temperament. Therefore such things do not suit the nature of man. Instead of these, he has reason and hands whereby he can make himself arms and clothes, and other necessaries of life, of infinite variety. Wherefore the hand is called by Aristotle (De Anima iii, 8), "the organ ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... dazzling. She had masses of golden hair wreathed round her dainty head in a bewilderment of waves and braids. She had great dark eyes of blue set off by long curling lashes, and delicately pencilled dark brows which gave the eyes a pansy softness and made you feel when she looked at you that she meant a great deal more by the look than you had at first suspected. They were wonderful, beautiful eyes, and the little company of idlers at the station were promptly bewitched ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... this as in everything else, she had set herself of late to soften down any girlish harshness or brusquerie, such as Lady Pynsent used sometimes to complain of in her, and to develop the gracious softness of manner which Sydney liked ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that fact had at first made his doubt itself a little dubious. And she was probably from the South (they were different there). Hence her softness, her full tone, her richness and her glow. Hence her exotic strain that went so well with the false tropics of the scene. But whether she were a provincial or an urban, or, as she seemed, a cosmopolitan splendor, Thesiger was not cosmopolitan enough to tell. She might have been the ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... to remedy these Inconveniences. The volatile Sulphur with which it abounds, is proper to supply the Place of that which the Blood loses every day through Age, it blunts and sheaths the Points of the Salts, and restores the usual Softness to the Blood, like as Spirit of Wine united with Spirit of Salt, makes a soft Liquor of a violent Corrosive. This same sulphurous Unctuosity at the same time spreads itself in the solid Parts, and gives them, in some sense, their natural Suppleness; ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... and fragrant also as the autumn lotus, equal in beauty unto her (Lakshmi) who delighteth in autumn lotuses, and unto Sree herself in symmetry and every grace she is such a woman as a man may desire for wife in respect of softness of heart, and wealth of beauty and of virtues. Possessed of every accomplishment and compassionate and sweet-speeched, she is such a woman as a man may desire for wife in respect of her fitness for the acquisition of virtue and pleasure and wealth. Retiring to bed last and waking up first, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the crouching figure sprang up and Ferdinand Ramero, his steel-blue eyes blazing, came forward with cat-like softness. But the sturdy little man before the priest stood, hat in hand, undisturbed by any ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... softness of tone that somehow dispelled all thought of his uncouthness. "No. She lived at Fort Norman, over on the Mackenzie—that is, she died there. Her home, I think, was in the Southland. My father used to tell me how she feared the North—-its snows and ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... herself and her eyes grew sweet with the memory of those stolen, reprehensible hours along the frontier. Something within her breast cried out for those shining, gone-by moments, something seemed to close down on her throat, something flooded her eyes with a softness that rolled up from her entire being. Their line! Their insurmountable barrier! An absurd yet ineffable longing to fall down and kiss that line came over her with ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Mrs Mildmay glanced at her anxiously, very anxiously. But there was no sign of irritation in the quiet old face—only of thought, deep thought. And there was a grave softness in the usually keen eyes, as if they were reviewing far distant ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Holofernes suffice thee, and drive not me also to death with the softness of thy voice. Art thou not aware that the soul of my soul burns for thee and will not wait—the more so since thou hast done a mighty deed and art proved a woman ...
— Judith • Arnold Bennett
... the outlines that wholly enclosed the figures, and those staring eyes, and the feet stretched on tip-toe, and the pointed hands, with the absence of shadow and the other monstrous qualities of those Greeks; and good grace was given to the heads, and softness to the colouring. And Giotto, in particular, gave better attitudes to his figures, and revealed the first effort to give a certain liveliness to the heads and folds to his draperies, which drew more towards nature than those of the men before him; ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... the singular uniformity of the valley. The slope was gentle on each side, without any abrupt declivities, and there was hardly any variation in its width. The dark-green color of the incline and bottom of the valley gave the whole scene a softness that would have charmed ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... too sure," said the beetle solidly. "You've a nice velvety softness about you, and then you have the best name of them all. What sick person wouldn't ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... said, with a terrible softness of voice. He restrained his choler for a time. "Where have you been, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... of fair green fields and meadows, of silent lakes bordered with rushes, out of which sprang wild-fowl slowly flapping their broad wings; of forests thick and dark, where on fallen trees the green moss had grown in velvet softness; of mountains lifting their purple tops into the fleecy clouds, and of long, shady country roads winding in and out and about the hills; of lanes bordered with blackberry-bushes and sumac, clematis and wild-rose; of dewy nooks full of ferns; of ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... insensibly, as he advances, into a succession of shady bowers that invite him to their depths; the scenery is monotonous, and yet ever various from the richness of its sylvan beauty, possessing all the softness of forest glades without their gloom. Towards Bologna, the landscape roughens into hills, which grow into Apennines, but Arcadia still breathes from slopes and lawns of tender green, which take their rise in the low stream-watered valleys, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... and cowslip wine he sups, Where to the warm and passing southern winds, Azaleas gently swing their yellow cups. Soon everywhere, with glory through and through, The fields will spread with every brilliant hue. But high o'er all the early floral train, Where softness all the arching sky resumes, The dogwood dancing to the winds' refrain, In stainless ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... in a state of rest exceeds the average standard in frequency, regularity, and softness, and a general feeling of uneasiness be present, together with reddened eyes, warm nose, and coated tongue, we know at once that there is an unnatural derangement of the vital functions, and that fever in some form is present. The next question to determine ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... her sharply. There was a softness in her tones that appealed to him, even if she had not expressed such agreeable sentiments. Just what the deacon might have said or done after the impulse had been set going must remain unknown, for at the crucial moment a sound of militant bells, bells of defiance, jangled ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... but George seemed to understand what he was about, and, for two hours, not a word was spoken, except, perhaps, now and then a growl of anger, as some one stumbled over a log or bush that lay in his way. Finally, the softness of the ground under their feet indicated that they were approaching a swamp. George now paused, ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... bales, bundles, and boxes. A reasoning eye would have estimated the load at once as ranch supplies, bound on the morrow for some outlying hacienda. But to the drowsy intelligence of Curly they represented only warmth and softness and protection against the cold humidity of the night. After several unlucky efforts, at last he conquered gravity so far as to climb over a wheel and pitch forward upon the best and warmest bed ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... from the children of our neighbours. Between one of these and my brother, there quickly grew the most affectionate intimacy. Her name was Catharine Pleyel. She was rich, beautiful, and contrived to blend the most bewitching softness with the most exuberant vivacity. The tie by which my brother and she were united, seemed to add force to the love which I bore her, and which was amply returned. Between her and myself there was every circumstance tending to produce and ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... saw that he was awake now, his eyes fixed on her with an expression of softness and tenderness that she had not seen for many a long day. The old ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... flight wing. Try, my girl, O try what bliss Young men render when they kiss! Youth is alway sturdy, straight; Old age totters in its gait. These delights of love we bring Have the suppleness of spring, Softness, sweetness, wantoning; Clasp, my Phyllis, in their ring Sweeter sweets than poets sing, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... I could neither laugh with nor at the solemn utterances of men I esteemed ponderous asses; nor could I laugh, nor engage in my old-time lightsome persiflage, with the silly superficial chatterings of women, who, underneath all their silliness and softness, were as primitive, direct, and deadly in their pursuit of biological destiny as the monkeys women were before they shed their furry coats and replaced them with the furs ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... crib, went softly after a while into the other room, and saw that Lois at last slept, though she herself could not. Each time that she saw Girard he seemed more and more a stranger, so far removed was he from her dream of him. Through all his softness, his gentleness, she felt the streak of hardness, if nobody else did (though Mr. Cater, she remembered now, had spoken of it too), that the fires of adversity had molded. Perhaps no man could have worked ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... you may have to sail with me for a time," he said, quite softly, with a silken threat that belied the softness, as they moved slowly to comply, "and we might as well start with a friendly understanding. Lively now! Death Larsen makes you jump better than that, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... features which the struggles of the understanding to trace or govern the strong emotions of the heart, are wont to imprint on the yielding mass. Grief and care had mellowed, without obscuring, the bright tints of youth, and the thoughtfulness which resided on her brow did not take from the feminine softness of her features; nay, such was the sensibility which often mantled over it, that she frequently appeared, like a large proportion of her sex, only born to feel; and the activity of her well-proportioned, and even almost voluptuous figure, inspired the idea of strength of mind, rather ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... can Its last best work, but forms a softer man; Picks from each sex, to make the fav'rite blest, Your love of pleasure, or desire of rest: Blends, in exception to all general rules, Your taste of follies, with our scorn of fools: Reserve with frankness, art with truth allied, Courage with softness, modesty with pride; Fixed principles, with fancy ever new; Shakes all together, and produces—You. Be this a woman's fame: with this unblest, Toasts live a scorn, and queens may die a jest. This Phoebus promised (I forget the year) When those blue eyes first opened on the sphere; Ascendant Phoebus ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... silent again for a minute, resolute not to let even the thoughts of his good wife, who loved him through all his faults, change his hard manner to any unusual softness. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are built—unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions against commonwealths fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... who spent most of her time with an aristocratic aunt in the country, and the remainder under the repressive roof of a pompous politician in Palace Gardens. The aunt had, I believed, still a sneaking softness for me, but her illustrious brother had set his face against me from ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... noble a storm had celebrated their departure upon some storied river from some more romantic port than New York, they would have thought it an admirable thing. Even whilst they contented themselves, the storm passed, and left a veiled and humid sky overhead, that gave a charming softness to the scene on which their eyes fell when they came out of the saloon again, and took their places with a largely ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... also, that both, of the poets contrast the violet, in its softness, with the intense marking of the pansy. Milton makes ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... school my best clothes. I would wish to win their good-will by wearing no finery," said Ana, piously. She was a plump girl, with eyes like splinters of coal in her suave brown face; despite the extreme softness of her voice, these glittering splinters rested with no gentle ray ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... is curfew, now; but tomorrow, early, we will sally into the town, where we shall find a good choice of garments, for men of all conditions. You hold yourself well, and you have something of your mother's softness of speech; and will, I think, make a good impression on Sir ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... Grace-Dieu. From this account it appears that the liqueur was formerly called the Liqueur of the Grace-Dieu, but is now known as Trappistine. It is limpid and oily; possesses a fine aroma, a peculiar softness, a mild but brisk flavour, and so on. It was invented by an ecclesiastic who was once the Brother Marie-Joseph, and prior of the convent, but is now M. Stremler, having been released by the Pope from his vows of obedience and poverty, in order that he might teach Christianity ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... the baton of the leader, struck with some force upon the desk over my head. I was aware, at the same time, of a whispering all around my ears, and an incessant noise, like that of aspen leaves in a summer breeze, which, in spite of its softness and delicacy, overpowered the sound of the loud orchestra. When I was able to recover myself, I began to find that I had indeed placed myself in the centre of the house; not in the centre of sound, but, if I may so express myself, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... grazing-fields, each shut off from the other by its neat hedgerow and its sturdy gate. Beyond the fields the hills seem to flow away gently from us into the far blue distance, till they are lost in the bright softness of the sky. At one point, which we can see from our bedroom windows, they dip suddenly into the plain, and show, over the rich marshy flat, a strip of distant sea—a strip sometimes blue, sometimes gray; sometimes, when the sun sets, a streak of fire; ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... falling. A secret, wicked force seemed to be holding her feelers, her legs, her wings in invisible captivity. But she did not fall. Though she could no longer move her wings, she still hung in the air rocking, caught by a marvelously yielding softness and delicacy, raised a little, lowered a little, tossed here, tossed there, like a loose ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... "has no eyelids. It requires a broad glare and a beaten road. It prefers shadows which you can cut out with a knife. It doesn't know the beauty of this Virginia winter softness." ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... and endearing softness in the manner of Miss Evelyn most winning and most exquisitely attractive. It was evidenced even in her mode of handling my prick; without grasping it, her hand appeared to pass over it hardly touching it, but in so exciting a manner that after any number of encounters, she could raise it by ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... only succeeded in entirely getting rid of the vermin, but on my servant's scrubbing the chair with a hard brush and hot soap and water, I found that the caustic soda had formed a kind of soap, by chemically uniting with the oil contained in the old paint, thereby reducing it to such a state of softness, that by a few vigorous applications and soakings of the above-named solution, and subsequent scrubbings, my new favourite was also freed from its ugly time-worn jacket of dirty paint, discovering underneath a beautifully carved ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... beautiful woman in Alabama than Alice Westmore; and throughout that state, where the song birds seem to develop, naturally, along with the softness of the air, and the gleam of the sunshine, and the lullaby of the Gulf's soft breeze among the pine trees, there was no one, they say, who could sing ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... I would have leaned out to speak to the driver. Her manner had suddenly changed, and she was all softness ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... shrift reconcile her subjects from their obedience, yea, and bind many of them to attempt against her majesty's sacred person; and that, by the poison which they spread, the humors of papists were altered, and that they were no more papists in conscience, and of softness, but papists in faction; then were there new laws made for the punishment of such as should submit themselves to such reconcilements, or renunciations of obedience. And because it was a treason carried in the clouds, and in wonderful secresy, and came seldom to light, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... keep him waiting long. First the quick flutter of her footsteps; then the door gently opened—and she flew to him, her sari blowing out in beautiful curves. Then he was in her arms, gathered into her silken softness and the faint scent of sandalwood; while her lips, light as butterfly wings, caressed the bruise ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... around them, singing the songs of France. Often it happened that in the luminous darkness of the night, thick set with stars, they had to rise and restore peace among their four-footed friends, who, in the balmy softness of the air, had set to biting and kicking one another, uprooting their pickets and neighing and snorting furiously. Then there was the delicious coffee, their greatest, indeed their only, luxury, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and turned toward the dark cavern which was the mouth of Asti's last dwelling place. Once, more than a thousand years before when the walls of Memphir were young, Asti had lived among men below. But in the richness and softness which was trading Memphir, empire of empires, Asti found no place. So He and those who served Him had withdrawn to this mountain outcrop. And she, Varta, was the last, the very last to bow knee at Asti's shrine and raise her ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... with the knowledge that the crown hung poised above her head, there came upon Hilma a gentleness infinitely beautiful, infinitely pathetic; a sweetness that touched all who came near her with the softness of a caress. She moved surrounded by an invisible atmosphere of Love. Love was in her wide-opened brown eyes, Love—the dim reflection of that descending crown poised over her head—radiated in a faint lustre from her ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... convinces you!" says Florian. And about them, who were young in the world's recaptured youth, spring triumphed with an ageless rural pageant, and birds cried to their mates. He noted the red brevity of her lips and their probable softness. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... on his cheek, and a thrill shot through him; his beard had been shaved away, for he could feel the softness of the hand against his chin. He felt the hand passed over ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... surrounds the spacious basin now exhibits everywhere the signs of prosperity and civilisation. At the northeastern extremity has sprung up a great watering place, to which strangers are attracted from the most remote parts of our island by the Italian softness of the air; for in that climate the myrtle flourishes unsheltered; and even the winter is milder than the Northumbrian April. The inhabitants are about ten thousand in number. The newly built churches and chapels, the baths and libraries, the hotels ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... here as at home. There are, however, less temptations to vice, and less exposures to the American habit of hard drinking among young men; but, no doubt, the general influences here, in the way of developing a manly, energetic, and self-relying character, are less favorable than at home. There is a softness, a disposition to take life easy, and a want of moral earnestness in Italy, which are not favorable to youthful ambition and independence. On the other hand, the money-getting propensities and social rivalries of America ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... on slowly with a meditative air.. "I love her, ... yes!—as a man must always love the woman that baffles him, ... the woman whose moods are complex and fluctuating as the winds on the sea,—and whose humor sways between the softness of the dove and the fierceness of the tiger. Nothing is more fatally fascinating to the masculine sense than such a creature,—more especially if to this temperament is united rare physical grace, combined with keen intellectual power. 'Tis vain to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... musical richness and not poverty, as at first aspect it seems to do, the paucity of like-sounding syllables implying variety in its sounds. It has all the vocalic syllables and endings it needs for softness, and incloses them mostly in consonants for condensation, vigor, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... head over the crook of his arm, so that in her eager scrutiny of the map his lips for a moment or two touched the velvety softness of her hair. Again he felt the exquisite thrill of her touch, the throb of her body against him, the desire to take her in his arms and hold her there. And then she drew back a little, and her finger was once more tracing ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... has made us feel the softness, gentleness and beauty of the snow and caused us to forget that it is cold and damp, he speaks of himself. We can see him sitting by the window looking out upon the beautiful pearl-clad world. He brings us right into his own presence and we can almost see the flocks of startled brown ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... knife-blade, not as if scraped out by the friction of horse-hair upon catgut. When to this delicious quality of tone was added an exhibition of the most perfect technique, the triumph of the virtuoso was complete. The mysterious flowing softness and smoothness of tone was carried with unflagging facility through the most rapid and difficult chord and harmonic playing; and this, with other wonderful feats of bowing, added new and bewitching charms to the diablerie of violin ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... his two guardians, a Scotch noble—a Presbyterian and a Whig. This uncle was a widower with some children, but they were girls, and, though Lothair was attached to them, too young to be his companions. Their father was a keen, hard man, honorable and just but with no softness of heart or manner. He guarded with precise knowledge and with unceasing vigilance over Lothair's vast inheritance, which was in many counties and in more than one kingdom; but he educated him in a Highland home, and when he had reached boyhood thought fit to send him to the High ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Ryves! not beautiful nor interesting in her person, but with a mind of fortitude, susceptible of all the delicacy of feminine softness, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... importunities, only regretted his want of power to aid her. In vain had she attempted, by the offer of some remaining jewels, to secure the co-operation of her guards, with whom her loveliness and the softness of her manners had already ingratiated her. She had not succeeded even in communicating with Alroy. But after the unsuccessful mission of Honain to the dungeon, the late Vizier visited the sister of the captive, and, breaking to her with delicate skill the intelligence ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... A mellow softness fills the air— No breeze on wanton wing steals by, To break the holy quiet there, Or make the waters fret and sigh. Or the golden alders shiver, That bend to kiss the placid river, Flowing on and on for ever; But the little waves seem ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... home, that Reine Allix day by day blessed the fate that had brought to her this fatherless and penniless child. Bernadou himself spoke little; words were not in his way; but his blue, frank eyes shone with an unclouded radiance that never changed, and his voice, when he did speak, had a mellow softness in it that made his slightest speech to the two women with ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... sometimes been aware of it,—there would come a glint of sunshine and settle on Anna-Rose's little cheek where the dimple was, or he would lift his eyes from the Culture book and suddenly see the dark softness of Anna-Felicitas's eyelashes as she slept in her chair. But now, dressed properly, and in their dryland condition of cheerful animation, he perceived that they were very pretty indeed, and that Anna-Felicitas was more than very pretty. He couldn't help thinking ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... all that had a mind to make an interest with the people, who were extravagantly fond of those kinds of shows. Not only the men, but the women, ran eagerly after them; who were, by the prevalence of custom, so far divested of that compassion and softness which is natural to the sex, that they took a pleasure in seeing them kill one another, and only desired that they should fall genteelly, and in an agreeable attitude. Such was the frequency of those shows, and so great the number of men that were killed on ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Frontier Boys," he is a familiar figure but he is well worth introducing to those who are meeting him for the first time. Captain William Broome, familiarly known as Bill, or the old man, was a remarkable person. There was a strange softness in Captain Broome's tread, like that of the padded panther, as he came forward along the main deck. He appeared like a man always ready to get a death hold upon a nearby enemy, both wary and using unceasing watchfulness. This ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... simplicity, that has no mixture of folly in it, but which is inexpressibly engaging, and the more touching, perhaps, because at the moment we were looking at them, those very hearts which lent the eyes such meek and friendly softness, were wrung by a base, cruel, and most oppressive act of ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... stand alone. I wish to see men and women capable of such relations as are depicted by Landor in his Pericles and Aspasia, where grace is the natural garb of strength, and the affections are calm, because deep. The softness is that of ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... suitably proportioning the speed of feed-rollers and the revolutions of the frame, which is easily accomplished by varying the wheels on the left hand of frame, bands of any degree of hardness or softness may be produced. The machine appears to be simple and not liable to get deranged. It may be after a little practice attended to by a laborer, and is claimed by its maker to be able to produce 400 yards of band per hour. The frame makes about 180 revolutions per minute, that is, this is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... it to be material and positive, and scoffed at mere mental or sentimental woes. "The sight of people who want food and raiment is so common in great cities, that a surly fellow like me has no compassion to spare for wounds given only to vanity or softness." He said it was enough to make a plain man sick to hear pity lavished on a family reduced by losses to exchange a fine house for a snug cottage; and when condolence was demanded for a lady of rank in mourning for ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Katherine once. There was no softness in her attitude as she knelt beside his chair. Neither, Bobby felt, was there the slightest uneasiness. With a facile grace she helped the doctor bathe and bandage the ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... ear of maize and the antlers of a buck. Stately she moved, as a wild swan on a calm lake, or a black cloud over the brow of a mountain; and the boldness of her demeanour, and the fierceness of her eyes, contrasted strongly with the softness and effeminacy of her that seemed her younger, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... terror I could read in them all the history, all the characteristics, of Lord Clarenceux. They were the eyes of one capable at once of the highest and of the lowest. Mingled with their hardness was a melting softness, with their cruelty a large benevolence, with their hate a pitying tenderness, with their spirituality a hellish turpitude. They were the eyes of two opposite men, and as I gazed into them they reconciled for ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... question whether the growth of wealth and luxury in the United States is not tending here, as it has tended in all other nations, toward physical softness and deterioration. It may be argued on the contrary that while a few Occidental children are luxury-weakened, a great body of Oriental children are drudgery-weakened. But is there not much more reason to fear that in our case there is really decay at both ends of our social system—with the ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... needles in and out and wound the yarn around any fashion, while she babbled softly or asked a question and forgot it as soon as asked. Rather spare in figure and much wrinkled in face, she still had a placid look and smiled with a meaningless softness as ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... worth two of that," said the lady. "Who's to make pa go when once we begin in that way? As I mean to end, so I'll begin. And as for you, George, there's no end to your softness. You're that green, that the very cows would eat you." Was it not well said by Mr. Robinson in his preface to these memoirs, that the poor old commercial Lear, whose name stood at the head of the firm, was cursed with a Goneril,—and with ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... bedded character and softness, are of no value as building stones, but are used in the manufacture of brick, tile, ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... 130.—"I was never permitted to sleep till I had passed through the cosmetick discipline, part of which was a regular lustration performed with bean-flower water and may-dews; my hair was perfumed with a variety of unguents, by some of which it was to be thickened, and by others to be curled. The softness of my hands was secured by medicated gloves, and my bosom rubbed with a pomade prepared by my mother, of virtue to discuss pimples, ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... sleeping beauty of the garden's unlost configuration ... keeping a winter's share of its feminine grace and softness" 186 ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... six-course dinners. Luxury is better than simplicity if it can be the luxury of all. If not, it means selfishness, callousness, and broken bonds of brotherhood. Moreover, it has personal dangers; it tends to breed softness and laziness, an inability to endure hardship, what Agnes Repplier calls "loss of nerve." It tends to choke the soul, to crush it by the weight of worldly things, as Tarpeia was crushed by the Sabine shields. "Hardly ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... pushed deeper and deeper into the softness of the acceleration cushions. He had been worried about not being able to keep his eyes open to see the dwindling Earth in the teleceiver over his head, but the tremendous force of the rockets pushing him against gravity to tear the two hundred ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... ye say then?—that Spring long departed Has brought forth no child to the softness and showers; —That we slept and we dreamed through the Summer of flowers; We dreamed of the Winter, and waking dead-hearted Found Winter upon us and waste ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... plunged her son in the waters of Styx to make him invulnerable. The truth of this allegory is apparent. The cruel mothers I speak of do otherwise; they plunge their children into softness, and they are preparing suffering for them, they open the way to every kind of ill, which their children will not fail to experience ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... have taken ... seemed to [me] best both for the warding off of calumny from myself (which should bring dishonor upon the memory of Sir Rowland my father, if a daughter of his could be thought to prefer doubtful ease before virtuous sufferance, softness before reputation), and for ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... distress, besought them that they would spare her life, which, as she said, could be of no benefit to them, and could only serve to increase the number of their sins; but they were too much flushed in cruelty and blood to give any attention to her entreaties, and so without respect either to the softness of her sex, or to her tender age, with a shower of blows from their clubs they laid her dead upon the floor. Being thus become master of the house, Perrier took the keys, and opening the several apartments, disclosed to them all ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... personal being, and the two are never quite fused. Can you not recall a score of examples in history of men who have led this dual existence? You reviewed for me Bismarck's Love Letters and were yourself struck by this sharp contrast between the iron determination of the man in public affairs and the softness and sweetness of his domestic life. That is but one case in point of the eternal dualism in masculine nature which a woman can never comprehend, and which always, if it confronts her nakedly, she resents. For a woman is not so. There exists no ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... hard to conceive that anything could induce you to perpetrate an act so shocking, so impossible to reconcile to nature or reason. One should have thought your own sense, your education, and even the natural softness of your sex, might have secured you from an attempt so ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... the eyes, if the life has not been one of physical suffering, usually retain their power of moving appeal; the lines of the face, if changed, may be refined by a certain spirituality; the gray hair gives dignity and softness and the charm of contrast; the low sweet voice vibrates to the same note of femininity, and the graceful and gracious are graceful and gracious still. Even into the face and bearing of the plain woman whose mind has grown, whose thoughts ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sympathy, you could never wish it to be changed. Her nose and mouth were perfect. How many little noses there are on young women's faces which of themselves cannot be said to be things of beauty, or joys for ever, although they do very well in their places! There is the softness and colour of youth, and perhaps a dash of fun, and the eyes above are bright, and the lips below alluring. In the midst of such sweet charms, what does it matter that the nose be puggish,—or even a nose of putty, such as you think you might ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... sentiment accorded with her strain of romance, and they read poetry and had discussions as they sat over the fire, growing constantly into greater intimacy and confidence. Sophy waited on him, and watched him perpetually, and her assiduity was imparting a softness and warmth quite new to her, while the constant occupation kept affronts and vexations out of her sight, and ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shallow, and appears to have been arranged for a number of performers standing in a line, like a company of soldiers. There stands the silent skeleton, however, as impressive by what it leaves you to guess and wonder about as by what it tells you. It has not the sweetness, the softness of melancholy, of the theater at Arles; but it is more extraordinary, and one can imagine only ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... to say what this condition is not than what it is. It is not manifested to the senses by weight or color, dryness or moisture, hardness or softness. In these particulars all brains are pretty nearly alike. When the cerebral action stops and the man dies, we may find lesions visible enough to the sense,—vessels preternaturally engorged with blood, effusions of lymph, thickening ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... presence for the so-called great house, what a grace for the so-called great positions! He might regret at once, while he was about it, that they weren't princes or billionaires. She had treated him on their Christmas to a softness that had struck him at the time as of the quality of fine velvet, meant to fold thick, but stretched a little thin; at present, however, she gave him the impression of a contact multitudinous as only the superficial can be. She had throughout never a word for what went on at home. She came ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... flowers, stretches away to a purple curtain of mountains, whose romantic outline rises constantly in a thousand new forms of beauty. The upland at the foot of these mountains is beautifully diversified with tufts of trees, and the contrast of the purple softness of the distant hills with the dazzling gold and emerald of the wide meadow-tracts they inclose is a striking feature in the landscape. Droves of silver-haired oxen, with their great, dreamy, dark eyes and polished black horns, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... shoulders with an edging of embroidery, below which appeared her pretty little arms, bare and rosy. She had small turquoise rings in her ears, a cross at her neck, a blue velvet ribbon in her well-brushed hair; and she displayed all her mother's plumpness and softness—the gracefulness, indeed, of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... where bound, and of its robe bereft By needy man, that all-depending lord, How meek, how patient, the mild creature lies! What softness in his melancholy face, What ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... fondness and resentment with which this letter was dictated, marked so strongly the sufferings and disordered state of the writer, that all the softness of Cecilia returned when she perused it, and left her not a wish but to lessen his inquietude, by assurances of unalterable regard: yet she determined not to trust herself in his sight, certain they could only meet to grieve over each other, and conscious ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... shadowy as sleeping water. As some rich weed that the warm sea holds and swings, as some fair cloud lingers in radiant atmosphere, her hair floated, every parted tress an impalpable film of gold in the crude sunlight of the ray turned upon her; and when she danced towards the footlights, the bright softness of the threads clung almost amorously about her white wrists—faint cobwebs hanging from white flowers were not more faint, fair, and soft; wonderful was the hair of this dancing girl, suggesting all fabled enchantments, all visions ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... we are allowed to see Helena Landless, the restraint which she puts on her "tigerish blood" is admirable: she is very fresh and original. The villain is all that melodrama can desire, but what we do miss, I think, is the "atmosphere" of a small cathedral town. Here there is a lack of softness and delicacy of treatment: on the other hand, the opium den is studied ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... mutual grief over Rosalie's trouble, she and her mother had drawn nearer in spirit, and strange words of sorrow and sympathy, as though dragged from her very depths, had come faltering from the girl's lips. But the next day all trace of such unaccustomed softness had disappeared. She was her gay, resilient self once more, bright and hard as the stones she loved to wear, and more reserved and withdrawn from her family than ever. She avoided both her mother and sister as much as possible, spending most of her time in her own room or with her friend Kitty ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... "Tender softness, infant mild, Perfect, purest, brightest Child! Transient lustre, beauteous clay, Smiling wonder of a day! Ere the last convulsive start Rend thy unresisting heart, Ere the long-enduring swoon Weigh ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was with her, and her outlook was of the dreariest. If it were true, as the old man evidently believed, that his hour had come, she would again be friendless and solitary on the face of the earth. Abel Graham saw these signs of grief, and a curious softness visited his heart, though he could scarce believe one so fair and sweet could ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the Rector to himself, as he again put down the letter; but even as he spoke the softness in his face passed into resolution. He sank once ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and in the interval I walked some miles into the interior. The plain as usual consisted of gravel, mingled with soil resembling chalk in appearance, but very different from it in nature. From the softness of these materials it was worn into many gulleys. There was not a tree, and, excepting the guanaco, which stood on the hilltop a watchful sentinel over its herd, scarcely an animal or a bird. All was stillness and desolation. Yet in passing ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... placed her rosy fingers on his forest of crisp hair. Wool when touched gives an impression of softness. Dea touched a lamb which she knew to be a lion. Her whole heart poured out an ineffable love. She felt out of danger—she had found her saviour. The public believed that they saw the contrary. To the spectators the being loved was Gwynplaine, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of her Harry, from his first pony upward. And she had not gone far before a tiny hand slipped itself into hers and nestled there; moving and quivering occasionally, like a wild bird voluntarily tame. And when the drive ended, Victoria was quite sorry to lose its lithe softness. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the small velvet hands in her own palm. The clear blue-white of their eyes, the softness of their hair, the very feel of their firm, strong bare legs gave her an actual pang of joy. But a half hour—an hour—with them, and she grew restless, irritable. She didn't ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... another cause why a sleeper requires more protection from below, than from above: it is that if the ground be at all wet, its damp will penetrate through very thick substances laid upon it. It will therefore be clearly understood that the object of a mattress is not alone to give softness to the bed, but also to give warmth; and that if a man lies in a hammock, with only the hammock below, and blankets above, he will be fully as much chilled as if the arrangement had been reversed, and he had lain upon ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Nor aught the judging maid might win Me to assoil from HER sweet sin. But nought were extreme punishment For that beyond-divine content, When my with-thee-first-giddied eyes Stooped ere their due on Paradise! O hour of consternating bliss When I heavened me in thy kiss; Thy softness (daring overmuch!) Profan-ed with my licensed touch; Worshipped, with tears, on happy knee, Her doubt, her trust, her ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... hope you will not refuse me." She took up the lute without more entreaties, and putting it presently in tune, played and sung with such an air, as charmed the very soul of the caliph. Afterwards she played upon the lute without singing, but with so much strength and softness, as to transport him into ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... companionship of the dancing darlings; she bridled to their bland flirtation and casually kissed them at the end of each dance. Babbitt hated her, for the moment. He saw her as middle-aged. He studied the wrinkles in the softness of her throat, the slack flesh beneath her chin. The taut muscles of her youth were loose and drooping. Between dances she sat in the largest chair, waving her cigarette, summoning her callow admirers to come and talk to her. ("She thinks she's a blooming queen!" growled Babbitt.) She chanted ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the rocks were fit to crack with the heat. I remembered having seen cottagers heat their ovens in this way in Somersetshire. I now raked out the fire and all the mortuary remains of insects, and then laid down a plaid thrice doubled for softness. Having done this, I seized upon my friend, weak and prostrate as he was, and shoved him into his oven like a batch of bread. I had previously given him a big dose of quinine (without which medicine I never travel in these parts), and now I set to work rubbing him, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... every side was the fulfilment of its innumerable promises. The bluebird, with the softness of June in his notes, had told his love amid the snows and gales of March, and now, with unabated constancy, and with all a father's solicitude, he was caring for his third nestful of fledglings. Young orioles were essaying flight from their wind-rocked cradles on ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... reading; and must have dozed over the book. Suddenly, I awoke and sat upright, with a start. For a moment, I looked 'round, with a puzzled sense of something unusual. There was a misty look about the room, giving a curious softness to each ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... explanation. The sounds of common conversation have but little resonance; those of strong feeling have much more. Under rising ill temper the voice acquires a metallic ring. In accordance with her constant mood, the ordinary speech of a virago has a piercing quality quite opposite to that softness indicative of placidity. A ringing laugh marks an especially joyous temperament. Grief unburdening itself uses tones approaching in timbre to those of chanting: and in his most pathetic passages an eloquent speaker similarly falls into tones more vibratory than those ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... own, And touch'd the Verse with Graces yet unknown. Each lawless branch thy level eye survey'd. And still corrected Nature as she stray'd: Warm'd Boileau's Sense with Britain's genuine Fire, And added Softness ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... explained to me how this caudle was made, and in fact concocted some for me to taste. It is a light mixture of broth, milk, wine (which is in the largest quantity), one or two yolks of eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and a few cloves. It is white; has a very strong taste, not unmixed with softness. I should not like to take it habitually, nevertheless it is not disagreeable. You put in it, if you like, crusts of bread, or, at times, toast, and then it becomes a species of soup; otherwise ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Rip down on the bunk and stripped off his tunic. The fine-drawn face of the sleeper looked wan against the foam rest, and he snuggled into the softness like a child as he turned over and curled up. But his skin was clear—it was real sleep and not the plague which ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... with exquisite ferns and mosses. Overhanging it are weeping palms with long straight leaves. Trees, with erect stems as tall as Nelson's Column, strain upward to the light. Butterflies in numbers flutter noiselessly about. The air is absolutely still and of a feel like satin. Clouds of intangible softness and clean and white as snow float around, appear, dissolve, and reappear. Through the parting in the overhanging trees the intense blue sky is seen in glimpses. The sun here and there pierces through the arching foliage, and the greens of the foliage glisten brighter ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... conscience in Adrian's eyes, there was little doubt. With sombre heart he failed not to mark every point of this all-human grace, but to him goddess-like beauty, the triumph and glory of youth. The coy, dainty poise of the adorable foot—pointed so—and treading the ground with the softness of a kitten at play; the maddening curve of her waist, which a sacque, depending from an exquisite nape, partly concealed, only to enhance its lithe suppleness; the divinely young throat and bust; and above all the dazzling black rays from ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... not, but from one or the other it came, most surely. No daughter of Eve she, but an angel or a fiend, perhaps—who knows?—something of both. The quarrelets of pearl flashed through her scarlet smile, and as her mouth moved the dimples sank and filled by turns in the blush-rose softness of her exquisite cheek. Over the even smoothness of her half-uncovered shoulders played a floating gloss as of agate, and a river of large pearls, not greatly different in hue from her neck, descended towards her breast. Now and then she raised her head with a peacock-like gesture, and sent a quiver ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... young love continued. Our cousin and Flora were only children still, and there was no engagement. The elders looked upon the intimacy as natural and mutually beneficial. It would help soften the boy and strengthen the girl; and they took for granted that softness and strength were precisely what were wanted. It is a great pity that men and women forget that they have been children. Parents are apt to be foreigners to their sons and daughters. Maturity is the gate of paradise, which shuts ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... like a dike, for centuries postponed the inevitable end, but which also, like every artificial barrier, gave way when the strong masculine impulse which first created it had degenerated into that worship of comfort, wealth, and general softness, which is the ideal of the peace prophets of to-day. The wave of the invaders broke in,—the rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew, and beat upon the house, and it fell, because not founded upon the rock of virile reliance upon strong ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... tell me." No wonder he could not tell that soft-eyed, clinging warmth; that subtle mixture of fire and softness, spirit and gentleness—that spirit which in the years of trouble they had passed together had grown part of his very nature—that they must part! No wonder that the father, upon whom the child built his every idea of what was great and ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... not: sooth to say, the turmoil of hope and fear within his heart ate up somewhat the softness that might else have mastered him at this new sight of his fathers' house. He rode forth before the others, and lifted up his voice and loudly and clearly cried a blessing on the Dale and the dwellers therein, and then rode soberly down the bent, and the others followed ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... longer in the power of his will. I never saw any one who so completely gave me the idea of possession. Half an hour's conversation with him is enough to make a necessitarian of anybody. Accordingly, he is more complained of than blamed by his enemies. His moments of softness by his family, and when recurring to old college days, are hailed by all as a relief to the vehement working of the intellectual machine,—a relief equally to himself and others. These moments are as touching to the observer as tears on ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... in a voice of portentous softness: "Who the hell do you think you are? A little gorramighty? To make a mistake is natural; to fly into a temper when it is discovered is childish. What's the matter with you these past ten days, anyway? A man ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security. A man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dry and hard and close-grained. Men have drawn from adversity the elements of greatness. If you have the blues, go and see the poorest and sickest families within your knowledge. ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... you find so much to admire in Miss Wallace's gloves?" asked the wilful girl, biting her lip, as I fancied, to suppress a smile, though her cheeks were still suffused, and her eyes continued to give forth that indescribable expression of bewitching softness. "It is a pair my father presented to her, and she wore them last evening ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... night. Robert stayed to dinner. Will chanced to be absent and there were only the three of us at table. There was a mellow sort of stillness. A softness of voice possessed us all, even when we asked for bread or salt. Our conversation was trivial, unimportant, but kind and gentle. Between Ruth and Robert there glowed adoration for each other, which words and ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
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