"Amenity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you use the privilege of your profession to speak recklessly, and are insulting outsiders in a way that exhausts my patience. You are in my house, and it is a customary social amenity to respect the domicile ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... of the roads, that does not fit Surrey as well as Spain. The difference is that the Surrey hills are comparatively small and ugly, and should properly be called the Surrey Protuberances; but these Spanish hills are of mountain stock: the amenity which conceals their size does not compromise ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... "The personal charms of the Duchess of Devonshire constituted her smallest pretensions to universal admiration; nor did her beauty consist, like that of the Gunnings, in regularity of features, and faultless formation of limbs and shape; it lay in the amenity and graces of her deportment, in her irresistible manners, and the seduction of her society. Her hair was not without a tinge of red; and her face, though pleasing, yet, had it not been illuminated by her mind, might have been considered ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... in this man's attitude at a moment of deadly peril that Brackenbury was overcome with respectful admiration; nor was he less sensible to the charm of his conversation or the surprising amenity of his address. Every gesture, every intonation, was not only noble in itself, but seemed to ennoble the fortunate mortal for whom it was intended; and Brackenbury confessed to himself with enthusiasm that this was a sovereign for whom a brave man might thankfully ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of information, may be seized by all, but an author's diction cannot be taken from him. Hence very learned writers have been neglected, while their learning has not been lost to the world, by having been given by writers with more amenity. It is therefore the duty of an author to learn to write as well as to learn to think; and this art can only be obtained by the habitual study of his sensations, and an intimate acquaintance with the intellectual faculties. These are the true prompters of those felicitous expressions ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Normans, originally pirates and plunderers, intermingled with the gentler inhabitants of France. When they turned their eyes to England they were already guardians of civilization. And we blandly record the Norman conquest of England as an unqualified benefit, as an impetus to social amenity, art, learning, architecture, and religion. Protests are useless. The earth abounds in instances of the spread of knowledge, inventions, culture, through war and subjugation. The "rude" peoples who cried out at the outrage, and who fain would have kept their rudeness, receive no ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... about Cambridge was that it must be the only city of its size and amenity in the United States without an imposing hotel. It is difficult to imagine any city in the United States minus at least two imposing hotels, with a barber's shop in the basement and a world's fair in the hall. But one soon perceives that Cambridge is a city apart. In visual characteristics ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... she? No. The opening of the window had awakened her: surprise and terror had at first kept her silent—a surprise and terror that were by no means diminished by discovering who the intruder was. Although she had always spoken kindly to Karl, and even endeavoured, by the amenity of her manner, to soften his rude nature, she had from the first moment disliked him exceedingly, and felt his countenance most repulsive; so that, when she saw him entering her room through the window, she did not doubt that he was come for some very bad purpose, probably to rob ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... pleasant faces of men and women, and see beautiful flowers at a window, or hear a cage-bird singing at the corner of the gloomiest street; and for the country, there is no country without some amenity—let him only look for it in the right spirit, and he ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tongue was thought to be in his cheek, and London was written on his heart. When Stella was told that Dean Swift had composed a poem, not in honour of her, but of Vanessa, she replied, with exquisite feminine amenity, that it was well known that the Dean could be eloquent over a broomstick. If he that night extolled Bristol above her other rivals, it would be said of him that he was a verbose individual, who had called in past years Leeds a beautiful ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... opportunity of seeing so much as I could have wished, and particularly the Emperor's great park at Gehol, which, from the description of the Embassador, seemed to be almost unrivalled for its features of beauty, sublimity, and amenity. But my own deficiency will be amply filled up with an extract or two from the Journal of his Lordship, whose taste and skill in landscape gardening are so well known. I have indeed much to regret that I could not enrich the present work ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... are reckoned hopelessly bourgeois even by the cultivated pressmen. It is a fastidious public, intelligent, learned, and extremely severe: painting it regards as an end in itself, not as a branch of journalism or a superior amenity; and no artist can begin to abuse his talent or play tricks with the currency without getting from this formidable body the sort of frown that makes even a successful portrait-painter wince. Indeed, many popular continental likeness-catchers, some of whom enjoy the highest ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the other disadvantages of life. He was not the whole Heyst of course; he is only the physical and moral foundation of my Heyst laid on the ground of a short acquaintance. That it was short was certainly not my fault for he had charmed me by the mere amenity of his detachment which, in this case, I cannot help thinking he had carried to excess. He went away from his rooms without leaving a trace. I wondered where he had gone to—but now I know. He vanished from my ken only to drift into this adventure ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... was at worst a Cynic, emulous though disdainful, trying all men by his own standard, and intolerant of a rival on the throne. To this result there contributed the bleak though bracing environment of his early years, amid kindred more noted for strength than for amenity, whom he loved, trusted, and revered, but from whose grim creed, formally at least, he had to tear himself with violent wrenches apart; his purgatory among the border-ruffians of Annan school; his teaching drudgeries; his hermit college days; ten years' struggle ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... the reins; and Mrs. Dale—who had tarried behind to control her tears—now running to the door for "more last words," he waved his hand with courageous amenity, and ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... common-sense and his genial humour. The same qualities, tempered by a certain grace and tenderness, also enter into the best of his poems. Avoiding the epigram of Pope and the austere couplet of Johnson, he yet borrowed something from each, which he combined with a delicacy and an amenity that he had learned from neither. He himself, in all probability, would have rested his fame on his three chief metrical efforts, 'The Traveller', 'The Hermit', and 'The Deserted Village'. But, as is often the case, he is remembered even more favourably by some ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... everybody, no matter what trouble, anxiety, or fatigue it might cost him, provided only it did not cost him money. Of a cheerful disposition, and fond of fun and joking, he was to be found at every feast and merry-making around, that was not got up by contribution, which he enlivened by the amenity of his manners, and by his discreet although not very Attic conversation. He had never had any tender inclination for any one woman in particular, but, innocently and without malice, he loved them all; and was the most given to complimenting ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... spare-rib, griskin, blade-bone, and that mysterious morsel, the "mouse." The chine he always sent over for Iden junior, who was a chine eater—a true Homeric diner—and to make it even, Iden junior sent in the best apples for sauce from his favourite russet trees. It was about the only amenity that survived ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Gassendi, Bayle, and Newton wrote." D'Alembert replied that the king would judge more favourably of the philosopher's person than of his works; that he would find in Diderot, along with much fecundity, imagination, and knowledge, a gentle heat and a great deal of amenity.[88] Frederick, however, did not send the invitation, and Diderot willingly enough went homeward by the northern route by which he had come. He passed Koenigsberg, where, if he had known it, Kant was then meditating the Critic of Pure Reason. It is hardly probable that Diderot ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... from Florence. He discoursed of Cimabue, Arpino, Carpaccio, and Argostino—of the gloom of Caravaggio, of the amenity of Albano, of the colors of Titian, of the frows of Rubens, and of the waggeries ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... unpleasant it was to find only cold politeness where he expected affection. This repulsiveness on the part of Napoleon was almost offensive, and must have been sensibly felt by my brother, who was not only remarkable for the mildness of his temper and the amenity and grace of his manner, but whose society was courted in the most distinguished circles of Paris on account of his accomplishments. He perceived in Bonaparte a kind of acerbity and bitter irony, of which he long endeavoured to discover the cause. 'I believe,' said Albert one day to my mother, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... eternal sea beyond that, the lighted lamps now flaring in the October night-wind, with the few dispersed people abroad at the tea-hour; these things, meeting and melting into the firelit hospitality at his elbow—or was it that portentous amenity that melted into them?—seemed to form round him and to put before him, all together, the strangest of circles and the newest of experiences, in which the unforgettable and the unimaginable were confoundingly mixed. "Oh, oh, oh!"—he could only ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... past ages that can never live again, embodied in part in exquisite productions of varied beauty which are a continual joy and inspiration to mankind, and in part in slowly evolved habits and laws of social amenity, and reasonable freedom, and mutual independence, which under civilised conditions war, whether between nations or between classes, tends to destroy, and in so destroying to inflict a permanent loss in the material ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... curiosity because they appealed to his imagination and moved his spirit. He was eager to plunge into controversy with friends and advisers who challenged or rebuked him, Hodgson, for instance, or Dallas; and he responded with remarkable amenity to the strictures and exhortations of such orthodox professors as Mr. Sheppard and Dr. Kennedy. He was, no doubt, from first to last a heretic, impatient, not to say contemptuous, of authority, but he was by no means ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the wood there came mild airs as from a deep and peaceful breathing; and the dew was heavy on the grass and the tight-shut daisies. This was the girl's first night under the naked heaven; and now that her fears were overpast, she was touched to the soul by its serene amenity and peace. Kindly the host of heaven blinked down upon that wandering Princess; and the honest brook had no words but ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... white trousers and a flannel shirt, had been marching unconcernedly. Of a sudden, without apparent cause, he turned back, took us in possession and led us undissuadably along a by-path to the river's edge. There, in a nook of the most attractive amenity, he bade us to sit down: the stream splashing at our elbow, a shock of nondescript greenery enshrining us from above; and thither, after a brief absence, he brought us a cocoa-nut, a lump of sandal-wood, and a stick he had begun to carve: the nut for present refreshment, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... metropolitan joys that made life in Atascosa City look as dull as a trip to Coney Island with your own wife. In ten minutes more we shook hands on an agreement that I was to act as his guide, interpreter and friend in and to the aforesaid wassail and amenity. And Solomon Mills, which was his name, was to pay all expenses for a month. At the end of that time, if I had made good as director-general of the rowdy life, he was to pay me one thousand dollars. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... road runs zigzagging down into Italy and is said to provide a very fine bob or toboggan run. A Rink is kept open. Now that Maloja is being opened as a Winter centre, every amenity for a Winter holiday will ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... himself with perfect impartiality and candour, was sensible that though his temper was good, yet that he was somewhat fastidious, and though his manners were polite, yet they were reserved—they wanted that amenity, gaiety, and frankness, which might be essential to win and keep a lady's heart. The more his love, the more doubts of his own deserts increased; but at last he determined to try his fate. He caught a glimpse of Caroline one morning as she was drawing ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... adoration; Nor knows as yet the full event Of those so low beginnings, From whence we date our winnings, But wonders at the intent Of those new rites, and what that strange child-worship meant. But at her side An angel doth abide, With such a perfect joy As no dim doubts alloy, An intuition, A glory, an amenity, Passing the dark condition Of blind humanity, As if he surely knew All the blest wonders should ensue, Or he had lately left the upper sphere, And had read all the sovran schemes and divine ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... acceptance—first into tolerance and then into imperative vogue—of evening dress for men and of the decollete for women, as the scholarly vestments proper to occasions of learned solemnity or to the seasons of social amenity within the college circle. Apart from the mechanical difficulty of so large a task, it would scarcely be a difficult matter to trace this correlation. The like is true of the vogue of the cap ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... administration of justice in the Court, and those only in cases where he himself expressed doubt,—with such modesty, that he seemed wholly unconscious of his own gigantic powers,—with such equanimity, such benignity of temper, such amenity of manners, that not only none of the judges, who sat with him on the bench, but no member of the bar, no officer of the court, no juror, no witness, no suitor, in a single instance, ever found or imagined, ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... affinity, agglomerate, agglutinate, aggrandizement, agnostic, alignment, aliment, allegorical, alleviate, altercation, altruistic, amalgamate, amatory, ambiguity, ambrosial, ameliorate, amenable, amenity, amity, amnesty, amulet, anachronism, analytical, anathema, anatomy, animadversion, annotate, anomalous, anonymous, antediluvian, anterior, anthology, anthropology, antinomy, antiquarianism, antiseptic, aphorism, apocryphal, aplomb, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... revenge, would have cut Peace had he met him in the Corn-market. The one was a sombre savage, the other a jovial comrade, and it was a witty freak of fortune that impelled both to follow the same trade. And thus you arrive at another point of difference. The Englishman had no intelligence of life's amenity. He knew naught of costume: clothes were the limit of his ambition. Dressed always for work, he was like the caterpillar which assumes the green of the leaf, wherein it hides: he wore only such duds as should attract the smallest notice, and separate ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... attacking, where an attack was possible, each of the isolated and weakly garrisoned townlets to which it came, and recruiting its strength from a district which had been hardly touched by the ravages of war, and which by its prosperity alone might have proved the amenity of British military rule. This force seems to have skirted Wepener without attacking a place of such evil omen to their cause. Their subsequent movements are readily traced by a ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which combines beautifully, from many elevated points, with the inland scenery; and, from the bay of Morecamb, the sloping shores and back-ground of distant mountains are seen, composing pictures equally distinguished for amenity and grandeur. But the aestuaries on this coast are in a great measure bare at low water[52]; and there is no instance of the sea running far up among the mountains, and mingling with the lakes, which are such in the strict and usual sense ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... climate, then the changeableness of the climate; add to these, the cheapness of liquor in general, the early disfranchisement of the youth from all parental control, the temptation arising from the bar and association, and, lastly, the pleasantness, amenity, and variety of ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and mock at her. Of course it had not been physical suffering; for physical suffering there might have been a remedy. She could come and go; she had her liberty; her husband was perfectly polite. He took himself so seriously; it was something appalling. Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers. She had taken him seriously, but she had not taken him so seriously as that. How could she—especially when she ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... occupy our souls. There let the clash of interests and the war of jealousies be forgotten; and let us endeavor to persuade ourselves that, as all the conflicting pursuits of life must terminate at this point at last, so should our feelings converge to the one focus of amenity and Christian love. And, after all, how many who have considered themselves to be antagonists must, during a moment of solemn reflection, become convinced that, when toiling in the great workshop of the world, they have been engaged, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... reserve their sternness for themselves, and to be amiable and pleasing in their homes, and see that their neighbors enjoyed themselves. Thus, filled with a sense of duty, and wishing, at all costs, to obey her director, who bade her converse with amenity, the poor soul perspired in her corset when the talk around her languished, so much did she suffer from the effort of emitting ideas in order to revive it. Under such circumstances she would put forth the silliest ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... to-day struck me as a very mild and agreeable race, with a good deal of the natural amenity which, on occasions like this one, the traveler, who is waiting for his horses to be put in or his dinner to be prepared, observes in the charming people who lend themselves to conversation in the hilltowns of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... strength to resist the attacks of the Indians. This was not an easy task. It may be readily imagined that the Boones saw only the bright side of the contemplated expedition. They painted the fertility and amenity of the flowering wilderness in the most glowing colors. They described the cane-brakes, the clover and grass, the transparent limestone springs and brooks, the open forests, the sugar maple orchards, ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... this traditional basis that has kept French culture up to a certain level of excellence. France has never been without standards. Therefore it has been to France that the rest of Europe has always looked for some measure of fine thinking, delicate feeling, and general amenity. Without her conventionality it may be doubted whether France could have remained so long ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... the possessor of a pretty and pampered wife, spends a week in London and returns five days before Christmas, certain things are rightly and properly to be expected from him. It would need an astounding courage, an amazing lack of a sense of the amenity of conjugal existence in such a husband to enable him to disappoint such reasonable expectations. And Cheswardine, though capable of pulling the curb very tight on the caprices of his wife, was a highly decent fellow. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... same story; unless a man is feared, he is not caricatured in a comic paper in the guise of a juggler keeping three balls in the air at once, the said balls being each of them legibly inscribed with one of the three words, "Gas—Gabble—Grab." Such a straining of the usual amenity of controversy witnesses to grave apprehension. Miss Quisante in her pension at ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... well-shaped; others maintained, and amongst the rest Khacan, that neither beauty, nor a thousand other charming perfections of the body, were the only things to be coveted in a mistress; but that she ought to possess, with a great deal of wit, prudence, modesty, and amenity ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... the same conventions, and have a working knowledge of each other's methods and of the routine of their respective trades. They understand each other, which is advantageous to both, and establishes a sort of amenity in their relations. Products of the same machine, one classed as useful and the other as noxious, they take the machine for granted in different ways, but with a seriousness essentially the same. The mind of Chief Inspector ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Amiet; but prisoner, never! citizen—as they still say sometimes, and I hope they'll not say it much longer. It must be admitted that the whole affair was conducted on both sides with touching amenity. As soon as the conductor saw us he shouted to the postilion to stop; I even believe he added: 'I know what it is.' 'Then,' said I, 'if you know what it is, my dear friend, our explanations needn't be long.' 'The government money?' he asked. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Churchwarden, everything in short but Mayor—an office which he left to the tradesmen, while taking care to speak of it always with respect, and indeed to see it properly filled. The part of County Magistrate—to which he had been born—he played to perfection, and with a full sense of its dignified amenity. (It was whispered that the Lord Lieutenant himself stood in some awe of him.) His favourite character, however, was that of plain citizen of his native town. "I'm an Axcester man," he would declare in his public speeches, and in his ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sea-ports; and of these he was most eminent in landscape. The scholar of Spagnoletto, he attached himself to the strong natural style and dark coloring of that master, which well accords with his subjects. In his landscapes, instead of selecting the cultured amenity which captivates in the views of Claude or Poussin, he made choice of the lonely haunts of wolves and robbers; instead of the delightful vistas of Tivoli and the Campagna, he adopted the savage scenery ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... the beasts to visit him in his den. There came to him a bear, a wolf, and a fox. The bear entered first, and being affably received by the lion, and conducted round the den, he was asked how he was pleased with the amenity of the place. Being no courtier, the bear answered bluntly that he could never stay in such a filthy hole, among heaps of decaying carcasses. The lion, enraged, chid the bear for finding fault with the amenity of the royal den, and tearing him up, cast away his carcass among the others. ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... old-fashioned town of the interior. From the beginning of this sojourn he call scarcely fail to be impressed by the apparent kindliness and joyousness of the existence about him. In the relations of the people to each other, as well as in all their relations to himself, he will find a constant amenity, a tact, a good-nature such as he will elsewhere have met with only in the friendship of exclusive circles. Everybody greets everybody with happy looks and pleasant words; faces are always smiling; the commonest incidents of everyday life are transfigured by a courtesy at once so ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... for a man somewhat mauled by the world to forget his hard knocks withal; and he forgot them. Looking about him, the length and breadth of his silent and lonely valley, he could see nothing but amenity in the earth which owed man so little. It was so with him at this time that the more he saw to love in Nature the less he could find admirable in man, who denied her at every turn. It was men, not She, who had given him his bruises; it was She, not men, who had taught him how to ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... of amenity expected from her, in relation to her brother, was not exhibited. She might perhaps be feeling herself awkward at introductions, and had to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the too great ardor," interrupted D'Artagnan, with perfect frankness and much amenity. "The fact is, monseigneur, that hospitality was never practiced ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... caused the President to relieve General Scott from command of the army. It was well known that his political opinions were not in harmony with the Administration, while those of his successor were. There had been anything but that amenity which should exist between a commissioner to negotiate a treaty of peace and the commanding general. General Scott did not think that Mr. Trist treated him with the consideration his position required—rejecting all overtures on the part of the general. General Scott ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... attempts to convince him of the impiety of his scepticism; while he remained cool, but unshaken; and I left him with mingled emotions of pity, for his adherence to doctrines so damnable; and of admiration, at the amenity and philanthropy ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... have been here—from the comfort of the inn—from the extreme civility and attention of the townspeople—and from the yet more interesting society of the Comte de la Fresnaye, the Cures Mouton and Langevin—together with the amenity of the surrounding country, and the interesting and in part magnificent remains of antiquity—can never be erased from my recollection. It is here that the tourist and antiquary may find objects for admiration and materials for recording. I have done both: admired and recorded—happy, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... distress yourself, my dear Miss Kendall," she said, benignantly. "There is no cause for apprehension. Absolute secrecy and perfect amenity will prevail. You will be sent for later perhaps, but nothing unpleasant will occur. Depend upon it, the Board will welcome this revelation of the true state of affairs, and ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... appealed to an element of romance in his character, which was strongly emotional though extremely reticent. Only an artist would have recognized beauty in those scenes, for in all Ireland it would be difficult to find a landscape with less amenity; the hill shapes are featureless, without boldness or intricacy of line. Redmond, a born artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to beauty in all kinds—yet rather to the beauty that ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... professionally on Europe to an extent that made his comparative personal obscurity, and the failure of Oxford to do justice to his eminence, a puzzle to foreign specialists in his subject. I do not blame Oxford, because I think Oxford is quite right in demanding a certain social amenity from its nurslings (heaven knows it is not exorbitant in its requirements!); for although I well know how hard it is for a man of genius with a seriously underrated subject to maintain serene and ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... appreciated the chivalry, generosity and independence for which he was justly renowned, and in the various differences which arose among the restless subjects of Gruyere, advised them to trust to the justice of their ruler. Preserving to his last day the enthusiasm and the frank amenity of a singularly charming and well-balanced character, Count Louis was wise in the management of his estates, encouraged printing at Rougemont, and sharing the love of pomp and beauty of the Savoy court, was an amateur in architecture and as enthusiastic in his religion as he was in all ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... with white arms spread. He, sick to lose The amorous promise of her lone complain, Swoon'd, murmuring of love, and pale with pain. The cruel lady, without any show 290 Of sorrow for her tender favourite's woe, But rather, if her eyes could brighter be, With brighter eyes and slow amenity, Put her new lips to his, and gave afresh The life she had so tangled in her mesh: And as he from one trance was wakening Into another, she began to sing, Happy in beauty, life, and love, and every thing, A song of love, too sweet for earthly lyres, While, like ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... beauty wax more beautiful in his imagination. Who Mr Howard was, or even if that were indeed his real name, no one knew; but none doubted that he was of gentle birth, and all with whom he had ever conversed in his elegant amenity, could have sworn that a youth so bland and free, and with such a voice, and such eyes, would not have injured the humblest of God's creatures, much less such a creature as Lucy of the Fold. It was indeed even so—for, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Flaxman are the names that come freshest to memory in this connection. For a period of fifty years Stothard stands pre-eminent in illustrated literature. Measuring time by poets, he may be said to have lent something of his fancy and amenity to most of the writers from Cowper to Rogers. As a draughtsman he is undoubtedly weak: his figures are often limp and invertebrate, and his type of beauty insipid. Still, regarded as groups, the majority of his designs are exquisite, and he possessed one all-pervading and un-English quality—the ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... said the workman whose business it was to warn the passers, in a tone of amenity it is ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Battalion took over Sector F1—some 2,000 yards of system from just north of La Boisselle towards Authuille (Blighty) Wood. The front line and communication trenches were knee deep in water and the trench shelters were poor. Rats galore and of enormous size added to the amenity of ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... theatres and elsewhere in the republic without any such momentous consequences, and without being received either with laughter, dancing or contempt. "The evidence," continued the Enquirer, "does not speak very strongly in favour of the amenity and decorum of the M. P.'s of Upper Canada. If calling for one of our national airs, in a time of profound peace, within a few miles of the frontiers, is regarded as an unpardonable crime by the British Government, who shall wonder or complain that the British ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... was inevitable, for quite apart from the question of religion it would indeed have been impossible to govern Germany according to their principles. We may, however, regret that the quarrel was not conducted with more amenity. These Prussian nobles were of the same race as Bismarck himself; they resembled him in character if not in ability; they believed that they had been betrayed, and they did not easily forgive. They were not scrupulous in the weapons they adopted; the Press ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... he was!" said Dumoulin, somewhat out of countenance, though in general not over-scrupulous in the choice of his bottle-companions: but, after the first surprise, he resumed, with the most charming amenity: "There are some rag-pickers very ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Temperance[29] and Mr. H. G. Wells "a sense of the State."[30] We find instead that the trader has "day and night held on indignantly" in his disastrous hunt for markets, destroying by accident or design whatever amenity in the world does not contribute to his "one aim, ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... honored the domestic gods, "I have had a dream," I think he would say, as he sat up, rubbing his eyes, in the familiar chimney-corner chair, "I have had a dream of a place, and I declare I believe it must be heaven." But to Dodd and his entertainer, all this amenity of the tropic night and all these dainties of the island table, were grown things of custom; and they fell to meat like men who were hungry, and drifted into idle talk like men ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Leroux from the monastery at leisure. If you knew what I have to do! I have almost to cook. Here, another amenity, one cannot get served. The domestic is a brute: bigoted, lazy, and gluttonous; a veritable son of a monk (I think that all are that). It requires ten to do the work which your brave Mary does. Happily, the maid whom I have brought with me from Paris is very devoted, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... with the names of the principal salters on his lips. At the moment he reached the little port of Pirial, five large barges, laden with stone, were leaving it. It appeared strange to D'Artagnan, that stones should be leaving a country where none are found. He had recourse to all the amenity of M. Agnan to learn from the people of the port the cause of this singular arrangement. An old fisherman replied to M. Agnan, that the stones very certainly did not come ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... are confined to his nation, as Granger's to ours. The parent of this race of books may perhaps be the Eulogiums of Paulus Jovius, which originated in a beautiful CABINET, whose situation he has described with all its amenity. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... learned woman, a blue-stocking, is not the creature to minister to a man's happiness. Positive knowledge is not a woman's province. It is antipathetic to the gentleness of her nature, to the amenity, to the sweet timidity which are the greatest charms of the fair sex, besides, women never carry their learning beyond certain limits, and the tittle-tattle of blue-stockings can dazzle no one but fools. There has never been one ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... manners, I am struck with the great difference between those of Frenchmen and Englishmen, of the same station in life. The latter treat women with a politeness that seems the result of habitual amenity; the former with a homage that appears to be inspired by the peculiar claims of the sex, particularised in the individual woman, and ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... refusal to admit him to England came through Cecil, and Knox told him that he was "worthy of Hell" (for conformity with Mary Tudor); and that Turks actually granted such safe conducts as were now refused to him. {108a} Perhaps he exaggerated the amenity of the Turks. His "First Blast," if acted on, disturbed the succession in England, and might beget new wars, a matter which did not trouble the prophet. He also asked leave to visit his flock at Berwick. This ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... with more amenity in his manner than he had yet shown, and laid his hand on Michael's shoulder as he stood in front of him, evidently quite ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... devastation, when the Divine Word goes forth for judgment upon the civilized world, which the North has ever had in store; and the regions on which it has principally expended its fury, are those, whose fatal beauty, or richness of soil, or perfection of cultivation, or exquisiteness of produce, or amenity of climate, makes them objects of desire to the barbarian. Such are China, Hindostan, Persia, Syria, and Anatolia or the Levant, in Asia; Greece, Italy, Sicily, and Spain, in Europe; and the northern ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... meditate upon the following proposition. The class even of our gentry breeds a body of high and chivalrous feeling; and very much so by unconscious sympathy with an order above themselves. But why is it that the amenity and perfect polish of the nobility are rarely found in strength amongst the mass of ordinary gentlemen? It is because, in order to qualify a man for the higher functions of courtesy, he ought to be separated from the strife of the world. The fretful collision with rivalship and angry tempers, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... discernment, as was soon proved by the alteration in his mien and manner; she must have managed to convince him that I neither was, nor ever had been, a rival of his, for the fortnight of fury against me terminated in a fit of exceeding graciousness and amenity, not unmixed with a dash of exulting self-complacency, more ludicrous than irritating. Pelet's bachelor's life had been passed in proper French style with due disregard to moral restraint, and I thought his married life promised to be very French also. He often ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... could not praise too highly. A warm love of nature is frequently displayed in the description of the country which he wrote out for Ferdinand and Isabella, of Spain. Of one place, named by him Puerto Santo, he said: "The amenity of this river, and the clearness of the water, through which the sand at the bottom may be seen; the multitude of palm-trees of various forms, the highest and most beautiful that I have met with, and an infinity of other great and green trees; the birds in rich plumage, and the verdure of the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... manner of Bourdaloue. They are simple in plan; the preacher's art lay in deploying and developing a few ideas, and infusing into them an imaginative sensibility; he is facile and abundant; faultless in amenity, but deficient in force and fire. Yet the opening words of the Funeral Oration on Louis XIV.—"God alone is great, my brethren"—are noble in their simplicity; and the thought of Jesus suddenly appearing in "the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... always bear witness to the extreme amenity with which I was now treated by the French officers. The evening passed over quickly. About eleven we retired to rest, my friend furnishing me with clothes, and warning me, that next morning he would call me at daylight, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... "Blackwood" and the "Quarterly." It is very pleasant, in the present case, to see both attack and defence conducted with so gentlemanlike a reserve,—and the latter, which is even more surprising, with an approach to amenity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... character, that the manners and conversation of these gentlemen bore (whenever I had occasion to appreciate them) no relation to the state of their chin and their boots. They were almost always marked by an extreme amenity. At Toulouse there was the strongest temptation to speak to people simply for the entertainment of hearing them reply with that curious, that fascinating accent of the Languedoc, which appears to abound in final consonants and ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... things seem to show German culture is a little lacking in the social instinct, the desire to make things easy and pleasant for others. It is this social instinct which is the dominating influence in French civilization and which has given to French civilization its incomparable urbanity and amenity. It is to the absence of this social instinct, to the inability to understand the attitude of other parties to a discussion, to the unwillingness to appreciate their point of view, that we may ascribe the failure ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Cologan's. We perceived that Teneriffe had attractions not only to those who devote themselves to the study of nature: we found at Orotava several persons possessing a taste for literature and music, and who have transplanted into these distant climes the amenity of European society. In these respects the Canary Islands have no great resemblance to the other Spanish ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... crime in which he had involved himself; perhaps he merely thought it would please me, and aid him to thus strengthen our position in the social world before taking our flight to a foreign land; but whatever lay at the bottom of his amenity, he gave me carte blanche that night for an entertainment that should embrace all his friends and mine and some of Mrs. Vandyke's. So I saw ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... Handicrafts and Child Study, the lectures on Reincarnation, the Holy Grail, the Signs of the Zodiac, and the Teaching of the Holy Zoroaster, I am afraid I laughed. But how shallow, how thin this laughter soon sounded amid the quiet amenity, the beautiful distinction of this pretty paradise! It was an afternoon of daydreams; the autumnal light under the low clouds was propitious to inner recollection; and as I walked the streets of this ideal city, soothed by the sense of order and beautiful architecture ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... wrangle at the breakfast table over some arrangement of the day, the rudeness of an acquaintance on the way to the city, an unfriendly act on the part of another firm, a cruel criticism needlessly reported by some meddler, a feline amenity at afternoon tea, the disobedience of one of your children, a social slight by one of your circle, a controversy too hotly conducted. The trials within this class are innumerable, and consider, not one of them is inevitable, not one of them but might have ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... looked at him with accusatory affection—a grace on her part not infrequent—could never find a word; but the Master, who was always all amenity and tact, helped him out now as he had often helped him before. 'That's his old idea, you know—on which we've so often differed: his theory that the artist should be all impulse and instinct. I go in of course for a certain amount of school. Not too much—but ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... his life had led to doubt his fidelity. Whether the Head of the war department is equal to his charge, I am not qualified to decide. I knew him only as a pleasant, gentlemanly man in society; and the indecision of his character rather added to the amenity of his conversation. But when translated from the colloquial circle to the great stage of national concerns, and the direction of the extensive operations of war, whether he has been able to seize at one glance the long line of defenceless border presented by our ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... him like an emanation. The difference was that what had been rude strength was now strength polished and restrained. The deeps might hide abrupt and violent things, but the surface had assumed a fine amenity. Where he wished to learn he was the aptest pupil, and from the days of the tobacco-field he had longed for this smooth lustre. Not Gideon, but the mother, spoke in the appreciation and the facility. Manner counted for much in Lewis Rand's day; the critical point was not what you did, but the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... home, along the deserted streets as quickly as possible. For a long time neither spoke. Then it was some trivial amenity that she uttered to which he made even shorter reply. Up in the elevator they went, silently watching the floor. At the door of her apartment he inclined his head. "Good-night," he said, without offering ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... fair women, and the magical beauty of the world, through hardly changing ages. The heroes of fame were but the best fruit in the garden of the nation's life. So ripe was that life, more than two thousand years ago, that it is hard to say what they did not know, of the things which make for amenity and comity. The colors of the picture are ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... for your kindness in connecting the interest you take in the sentiments of an old friend with the able part you take in the service of your country. It is an instance, among many, of that happy temper which has always given a character of amenity to your virtues and a good-natured direction to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... engaged, a variety, a fancy, and a dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits reminded the spectator of the invention of history and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits he appears not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere. His paintings illustrate his lessons, and his lessons seem to be derived ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... entered the room when dinner was announced. She greeted Lothair with calmness but amenity, and took his ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... intercourse with one another there was a singular amenity or pleasantness, and with some who had been prisoners for a long time, a sort of childlikeness. But it was like the childlikeness of a person partly dazed, or recovering from a severe illness or shock. They greeted ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... had invited Oover to dine with him, he could have been dining with Zuleika. And this was his last dinner on earth. Such thoughts made him the less able to take pleasure in his guest. Perfect, however, the amenity of his manner. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... sale of land and cattle: a public character, indeed, whose name was seen on widely distributed placards, and who might reasonably be sorry for those who did not know of him. He was second cousin to Peter Featherstone, and had been treated by him with more amenity than any other relative, being useful in matters of business; and in that programme of his funeral which the old man had himself dictated, he had been named as a Bearer. There was no odious cupidity in Mr. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... against irascibility, against bigoted ignorance, against an indissoluble assumption, perhaps logical, that he is of inferior mentality, this factotum has no defence. His very business is to meet all with amenity. It is his daily portion, included in the ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... devoted family. After the extinction of the direct male heirs, a brother, who was a captain in the army, came home to take possession of the property. He was a person well-respected in life, and possessed some talent, and much amenity of manners. The country gentlemen, however, shunned and disliked him, on account of the existing prejudice. This person, thus shunned and slighted, seemed to grow desperate, and plunged into the lowest and ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... shipping. There is something in the landscape here peculiarly agreeable. The verdure, the wood, the steep banks, and gently sloping lawns, generally opening to the sea or the lake behind the town, have a freshness and amenity that I scarcely remember seeing before. We saw but little of the upper city, but that little was handsome, in our way to the consul's. His house, like those of all the British merchants, is a little ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... in our rapidly written reflections, urged the policy and propriety of kindness, courtesy, and good-will between man and man. It is so easy for an individual to manifest amenity of spirit, to avoid harshness, and thus to cheer and gladden the paths of all over whom he may have influence or control, that it is really surprising to find any one pursuing the very opposite course. Strange as it may appear, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... economy. Mrs. Washington superintends the whole, and joins to the qualities of an excellent housewife that simple dignity which ought to characterize a woman whose husband has acted the greatest part on the theater of human affairs; while she possesses that amenity and manifests that attention to strangers which renders ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... is situated in the seventh heaven, and next under the throne of God; and, to express the amenity of the place, tell us that the earth of it is of the finest wheat-flour, or of the purest mask, or, as others will have it, of saffron; that its stones are pearls and jacinths, the walls of its building enriched with gold and silver, and that the trunks of all ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... soul was pure, his heart honest, his spirit just. When he had finished studying his documents he used to play the violin and cultivate hyacinths. Every Sunday he dined with his neighbours the Mesdemoiselles Helbivore. His old age was cheerful and robust and his friends often praised the amenity of ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... connection with the noble family of Sutherland. Her only sister had been married to William, seventeenth Earl of Sutherland,—'the last of the good Earls;' 'a nobleman,' says the Rev. Dr. Jones, in his Memoir, 'who to the finest person united all the dignity and amenity of manners and character which give lustre to greatness.' But his sun was destined soon to go down. Five years after his marriage, which proved one of the happiest, and was blessed with two children, the elder of the two, the young Lady Catherine, a singularly ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... of planning can be satisfactory for general application; that all plans should have regard to the physical and economic conditions of the territory to which they apply and should be made for the general purpose of securing healthy conditions, amenity, convenience and economic use of the land; and that more complete and adequate surveys and a comprehensive classification of land is essential to secure successful and ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... nothing unamiable or invidious in his shyness, and above all that there was nothing preponderantly gloomy. The qualities to which the Note-Books most testify are, on the whole, his serenity and amenity of mind. They reveal these characteristics indeed in an almost phenomenal degree. The serenity, the simplicity, seem in certain portions almost child-like; of brilliant gaiety, of high spirits, there is little; but the placidity ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... to know, as the first inquiry suggested by Class-Day, why is it that a boys' school should be placed beyond the pale of civilization? Do boys take so naturally to the amenities of life, that they can safely dispense with the conditions of amenity? Have boys so strong a predisposition to grace, that society can afford to take them away from home and its influences, and turn them loose with dozens of other boys into a bare and battered boarding-house, with its woodwork dingy, unpainted, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... highest rooms. I prefer interesting and pleasant people to important and majestic persons. Perhaps if I were more simple-minded, I should not care about the matter at all; just be grateful for the increased warmth and amenity of life—but I am not simple-minded, and I hate not fulfilling other people's expectations. I am not a prodigal, full-blooded, royal sort of person at all. I am not conscious of greatness, but far more of emptiness. I do not wish to seem pretentious. I have got this one faculty; but it has outrun ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not accustomed to respect any amenity of social intercourse and he paid no more attention now to the greeting than if it had never been uttered. He merely glanced sharply at the man and ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... elegant fancies, and giving a permanency to their own tastes; we dwell on their favourite scenes as a sort of portraits, and we eagerly collect those few prints, which are their only vestiges. A collection might be formed of such literary residences chosen for their amenity and their retirement, and adorned by the objects of their studies; from that of the younger Pliny, who called his villa of literary leisure by the endearing term of villula, to that of Cassiodorus, the prime minister of Theodoric, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... tugging at his heart-strings even in his hours of genial intercourse, and converting his very smiles into spasms; the anxious days and sleepless nights preying upon his delicate organization, producing that morbid sensitiveness and nervous irritability which at times overlaid the real sweetness and amenity of his nature, and obscured the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... had taken place in the middle of Piazza San Marco, always, as a great social saloon, a smooth-floored, blue-roofed chamber of amenity, favourable to talk; or rather, to be exact, not in the middle, but at the point where our pair had paused by a common impulse after leaving the great mosque-like church. It rose now, domed and pinnacled, but a little way behind them, and they had in front the vast empty space, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... asks is he feeling, after his good sleep, in good form and of good courage, "I have had a wonderfully beautiful dream...."—"A good omen, that! Tell me your dream!"—"I hardly dare to touch it with my thought, so do I fear to see it fade away."—"My friend," the older poet with fine amenity takes up the part of teacher, and his observations have a ripe, sunny, elevated wisdom, for which one should store them carefully as one does good fruit, "that exactly is the task of a poet, to mark dreams and interpret ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Dagonet's right, in the high dark dining-room with mahogany doors and dim portraits of "Signers" and their females, she felt a conscious joy in her ascendancy. Old Mr. Dagonet—small, frail and softly sardonic—appeared to fall at once under her spell. If she felt, beneath his amenity, a kind of delicate dangerousness, like that of some fine surgical instrument, she ignored it as unimportant; for she had as yet no clear perception of forces that did ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... political opponent a 'Whirling Coxcomb,' or a 'pensioned scribbler,' was a very mild amenity in eighteenth century party warfare; and the abuse of such small fry as these anonymous pamphleteers might be wholly disregarded did it not show Fielding's prominence, during these anxious times, as a strenuous Hanoverian, and also the fact that ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, expatiate on the magnificence of this city, its commodious private edifices, the cleanliness of its streets and public squares (a virtue by no means usual in that day), and on the amenity of its gardens and cultivated ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... bear a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. The style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, something of the Oriental character; and the same peculiarity may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the amenity and elegance which we generally find in the superstitions of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The legends of Aeschylus seem to harmonise less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticoes in which his countrymen paid their vows to the God ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he was endowed by nature with all that modesty and goodness which may occasionally be perceived in those few favored persons who enhance the gracious sweetness of a disposition more than usually gentle, by the fair ornament of a winning amenity, always ready to conciliate and constantly giving evidence of the most refined consideration for all persons, and under every circumstance. The world received the gift of this artist from the hand of Nature, when, vanquished by Art in the person of Michelangelo, she deigned to be subjugated ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... meanwhile there would be more to come from uncles so attachingly, so almost portentously, discussable. The vision at any rate was to stick by me as through its old-world friendly grace, its light on the elder amenity; the prettier manners, the tender personal note in the good lady's importations and anxieties, that of the hand-made fabric and the discriminating service. Fit to figure as a value anywhere—by which I meant in the right corner of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... countryside of England changed steadily from its lax pacific amenity to the likeness of a rather slovenly armed camp, while long-fixed boundaries shifted and dissolved and a great irreparable wasting of the world's resources gathered way, Mr. Britling did his duty as a special constable, gave his ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... her after her marriage—that fateful, desperate day. This was a voice which had a cheerless, fretful note, a savage something in it. Presently they two would meet, and she knew how it would be—an outward semblance, a superficial amenity and confidence before their guests; the smile of intimacy, when there was no intimacy, and never, never, could be again; only acting, only make-believe, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... there was protection also—protection for sport, for utility, for aesthetic reasons, and because of humane sentiments; even wholesome superstitions have safeguarded the robin redbreast and the wren. There were introductions too—the rabbit for utility, the pheasant for sport, and the peacock for amenity. And every introduction, every protection, every killing out had ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... for them, alimentary substances specially prepared for them by great industries devoted to the hygienic sustenance of infants after weaning, and medical specialists for their ailments; in short, an entirely new world, clean, intelligent, and full of amenity. The baby has become the new man who has conquered his own right to live, and thus has caused a sphere to be created for him. And in direct proportion to the diffusion of the laws of infantile hygiene, infant mortality ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... For ages past, the amenity of foreign manners in general, and French manners in particular, has been the theme of every tongue; and the bold Briton, who would fain look down upon all other nations, cannot deny the superiority of his continental neighbours in this respect at least. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... these unreconciled antipathies lie deep beneath the personal relationship of George Sand and Gustave Flaubert; lie deep beneath their successors, who with more or less of amenity in their manners are still debating the same questions today. The main currents of the nineteenth century, with fluent and refluent tides, clash beneath the controversy; and as soon as one hears its "long withdrawing roar," and thinks it is dying away, and is become ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... ideas at their fountain source. Indeed the whole literature of the period pays its tribute to their intelligence and critical taste. "He who will write with precision, energy, and vigor only," said Marmontel, "may live with men alone; but he who wishes for suppleness in his style, for amenity, and for that something which charms and enchants, will, I believe, do well to live with women. When I read that Pericles sacrificed every morning to the Graces, I understand by it that every day Pericles breakfasted with Aspasia." This same author was in the habit of ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... merchant prince retired from the field, escorted with amenity by the courtier. In the passage she suddenly dropped forward like a cypress-tree, and gave him her forehead to kiss. He kissed it with some little warmth, and confided to her, in friendly accents, that she was a fool, and off he went, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the neat and beautiful gardens were traversed, and the glebe surveyed, and the "bonny burnside" visited, and the water laved from its channel. It was, in truth, a new world to its young visitants—and appeared, in the superior house accommodation and rural amenity around, a terrestrial paradise, contrasted with the circumscribed dwelling on the rocky shore of the German Ocean in the north, or in the hamlet of Muirden amid the wilderness on the southern border of Scotland. The sensations and sympathies of that day, and of seven years which followed it, are ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... mouth, a straight nose, a forehead which has thrust back the hair from the top of his commanding head, although it is thick at the sides over the ears, and repeats in its soft gray the color of his kindly eyes. Before taking in these physical facts one receives an impression of benignity and amenity not often conveyed, even by the most distinguished. And, taking advantage of this amiability, I asked if certain words just used should be followed by a dash, and even boldly added: "Are you not famous, Mr. James, for the use ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... impulsive and eager, and with as entire a freedom from all appearance of assumption and authority, as though his pupils and he were merely peers. There was at once a warmth, a blandness and a child-like simplicity of manners, which made him the idol of every heart. And he carried the same amenity of temper into all the theological controversies of his life. He never stooped to ungracious personalities, and never seemed to be in pursuit of victory at the expense of truth and fairness. The result was that he was never assailed with personalities ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... in the neighbourhood of Fifth Avenue which are perfect in reticence and suitability. The clubs of New York are a splendid example even to London, the first home of clubs. In Central Park the people of New York possesses a place of amenity and recreation which Europe cannot surpass; and when you are tired of watching the antics of the leisurely chipmunk, who gambols without haste and without fear, you may delight in a collection of pictures which wealth and good management will make the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... brief talk on God and The Soul, questions were invited—meant only to be politely put, that the speaker might shine. But my question was not put for the sake of social amenity ... though I'll admit, just a little for the ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Storeman—now demobilised and dispersed—may have committed the irregularity suggested, with the idea of increasing the amenity of the stores during the inspection, as a humble compliment ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... the very few men who could answer with any plausibility to this last character of Earle's. But the marvellous amenity of his social gifts brings him a little closer to the kindly race of men than Earle thinks is usual with the contemplative student. In every other point it is an accurate piece of portraiture.[R] Nature might well ask approbation of her works and variety ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... perfect by far, nor so palatable, as they are in New Netherland. In general all kinds of pumpkins and the like are also much drier, sweeter and more delicious, which is caused by the temperateness and amenity of the climate. ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... unconscious. Have I been too presuming? Perhaps so. But why did her looks never till now speak her meaning as intelligibly as they do at present? I could not then have mistaken them. Why, till now, has she seemed to regard me with that sweet amenity which ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... her into an apartment which his eye knew at a glance had been subjected to that female superintendence which makes such uses from what men reject as insignificant; and he thanked her with more than his usual amenity, for the grace which had presided over, and the kindness which had dictated her preparations. As soon as he was left alone, he wheeled his armchair near the clear, bright fire, and resting his face upon his hand, in the attitude of a man who prepares himself as it were for ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by a momentary silence. Mrs. Trevillian looked dismayed; Miss Cooper evidently concluded that Kosinski must have dined on steak; Dr. Armitage agreed, but seemed to consider that more amenity of language might be compatible with the situation. Nekrovitch laughed heartily, enjoying this psychological sidelight, and I, who ought to have felt crushed, was perhaps the only one who thoroughly endorsed the sentiment expressed, finding therein ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... the majesty of Fashion, and continues to move about in society with the same kind of coat on his back as that worn by his first ancestor, hatless, disaffected of shoes, and totally obtuse to the amenity of an umbrella,—if, in fact, his only approach to humanity, as distinguished by apparel, is his occasional adoption of a collar precisely similar in general effect to those in which Fashion, empress of Broadway and of a great many other ways, condemns her wretched votaries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... have a single serf whom he has left unpledged; whereas—well, pray look at a fat man's fortunes, and what will you see? First of all a suburban villa, and then a larger suburban villa, and then a villa close to a town, and lastly a country estate which comprises every amenity! That is to say, having served both God and the State, the stout individual has won universal respect, and will end by retiring from business, reordering his mode of life, and becoming a Russian ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... with his visit to Virginia. The amenity of the climate, the magnificence of the forest scenery, the abundance of game,—all pointed it out as a favored land. He was pleased, too, with the frank, cordial character of the Virginians, and their independent ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... men whom the effusion of the Spirit has equally sublimated above every unholy thought; a common power seems to have invested them all with a preternatural majesty. Yet not an iota of the individual is lost in any one; the gentle bearing and amenity of John still follow him in his office of almoner; nor in Peter does the deep repose of the erect attitude of the Apostle, as he deals the death-stroke to the offender by a simple bend of his finger, subdue the energetic, sanguine ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... visit Fairfield next spring. Then she got into the carriage, and bowing and smiling in her exquisite way, and Miss Charlotte a little impatient and tired, they drove off. Bessie, exhilarated with her rather remote prospect of the Forest, turned to speak to her grandfather. But, lo! his brief amenity had vanished, and he ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Mr. Archibald Marshall has written. Those who remember Exton Manor and the three books dealing with the lives and deeds of the Clintons will consider this to be high praise, as, indeed, it is meant to be. Mr. Marshall preserves the ease and amenity of style which we have learnt to expect of him; he creates his characters—ordinary English men and women, animated by ordinary English motives—with all his old skill, and he sets them to work out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... Luke has made possible those pictures which now hang in many ladies' chambers, in which Jesus is represented exactly as he is represented in the Lourdes cinematograph, by a handsome actor. The only touch of realism which Luke does not instinctively suppress for the sake of producing this kind of amenity is the reproach addressed to Jesus for sitting down to table without washing his hands; and that is retained because an interesting discourse ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... of Glenfernie and Ian Rullock each very slightly and coldly acknowledged the other's presence. No words passed. But the slow amenity of life bent by a fraction the head of each, just parted the lips of each. Then Alexander turned with an abrupt movement of his great body and with his companions was swallowed ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... bounteous to the poor, and loved a flowing hospitality. A keen sportsman, he was not untinctured by letters, and had indeed a cultivated taste for the fine arts. Though an ardent politician, he was tolerant to adverse opinions, and full of amenity to his opponents. A firm supporter of the corn-laws, he never refused a lease. Notwithstanding there ran through his whole demeanour and the habit of his mind, a vein of native simplicity that was full of charm, his manner was finished. He never offended ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... arts of tact and temper, of frankness and sympathy, of delicate compliment and exquisite self-abnegation—with the result that a condition of living was produced which, in all its superficial and obvious qualities, was one of unparalleled amenity. Indeed, those persons who were privileged to enjoy it showed their appreciation of it in an unequivocal way—by the tenacity with which they clung to the scene of such delights and graces. They refused to grow old; they almost refused to ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... fellow, sleek and short, dapple grey, with a good long tail and a mild eye. Preston declared he had no shape at all and was a poor concern of a pony; but to my eyes he was beautiful. He took one or two sugarplums from my hand with as much amenity as if we had been old acquaintances. Then a boy was put on him, who rode him up ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of Gladstone, the Rishis, or hymn- writers who execrated him, were regarded by his worshippers as a darkened class, foes of enlightenment. They are spoken of as "the stupid party," as "obscurantist," and so forth, with the usual amenity of theological controversy. It would be painful, and is unnecessary, to quote from the curses, whether matins or vespers, of the children of night. Their language is terribly severe, and, doubtless, was regarded as blasphemy by the sun-worshippers. Gladstone is said to have ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... to say; "in sincerity I am fond of Gregory Darrell, and if he chooses to make love to my daughter that is none of my affair. The eyes and the brain preserve a proverbial warfare, which is the source of all amenity, for without lady-service there would be no songs and tourneys, no measure and no good breeding; and a man delinquent in domnei is no more to be valued than an ear of corn without the grain. No, I ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... to the sensitive; but these things offend the plainest taste. It is a danger which threatens the amenity of the town; and as this eruption keeps spreading on our borders, we have ever the farther to walk among unpleasant sights, before we gain the country air. If the population of Edinburgh were a living, autonomous body, it would arise like one man and make night hideous with arson; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mountain streams in the district, make it highly favourable to manufactures; and accordingly, as I stated, the inhabitants have for centuries been engaged in making cloth, as well as in agricultural pursuits. But the intercourse of trade failed, for a long time, to bring amenity and civilization into these outlying hamlets, or widely scattered dwellings. Mr. Hunter, in his "Life of Oliver Heywood," quotes a sentence out of a memorial of one James Rither, living in the reign of Elizabeth, which is ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... everything. It made everything appear in the light she wished for. Above all it enabled her to clarify her attitude towards her home. Now she understood. One did not scorn Sparta. One respected it, it was a noble influence in life; but for an Athenian, for whom amenity and beauty and suavity were as essential as food, Sparta was death. As was natural to her age and temperament, she sucked a vast amount of pleasure out of this pitying analysis of her subtle, complicated needs and the bare crudity ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the middle western American, a kind of Emporian! He hadn't much to say, but when he did speak, spoke to the purpose. They both, through all their roughness and coarseness and evident excitement over starting on their 'permission,' had that French instinctive social tact and amenity (of a sort) which keeps decent women from being afraid of them or from hesitating to talk with them; and they were both very sincere, and desperately trying to express something of the strange confusion that is in ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... well advanced before I approached the cottage. The amenity of a fine day in its decline surrounded me with a beneficent, a calming influence; I felt it in the silence of the shady lane, in the pure air, in the blue sky. It is difficult to retain the memory of the conflicts, miseries, temptations and crimes of men's self-seeking existence ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... directed by a precocious Jewish youth, who entered cordially into his wanting, not the fine new building of the Reformed but the old Rabbinical school of the orthodox; and then cheated him like a pure Teuton, only with more amenity, in his charge for a book quite out of request as one "nicht so leicht zu bekommen." Meanwhile at the opposite counter a deaf and grisly tradesman was casting a flinty look at certain cards, apparently combining advantages of business with ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... working so many weeks or days in the Labour Factory, or had been under observation for a reasonable time at the Shelters or in the Slums, and who had given evidence of their willingness to work, their amenity to discipline, and their ambition to improve themselves. On arrival at the Farm they would be installed in a barracks, and at once told off to work. In winter time there would be draining, and road-making, and fencing, and many other forms of industry ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... little contre-temps is no longer an obstacle," I resumed, "permit me to continue those inquiries which you have hitherto answered with so much amenity and so satisfactorily. As you have no clothes, in what manner is the parallel between your usage and that of the new London ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... wreathed with smiles, on the merest hint of a belated signal. Wreathed in smiles, all round, truly enough, these apologetic banquets struck Amerigo as being; they were, frankly, touching occasions to him, marked, in the great London bousculade, with a small, still grace of their own, an investing amenity and humanity. Everybody came, everybody rushed; but all succumbed to the soft influence, and the brutality of mere multitude, of curiosity without tenderness, was put off, at the foot of the fine staircase, with the overcoats and shawls. The entertainment offered a few evenings before Easter, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... when one goes to England one still hears of it. To be sure one hears of it mainly from Americans, but they have the best means of knowing the fact; they are chiefly concerned, and they are supported in their belief by the almost unvaried amenity of the English journals, which now very rarely take the tone towards Americans formerly habitual with them. Their change of tone is the most obvious change which I think Americans can count upon noting when they come to England, and I am far from reckoning it insignificant. It did not happen of ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells |
